Bjarne Stroustrup

Bjarne Stroustrup ( born 30 December 1950) is a Danish computer scientist, most notable for the invention and development of the C++ programming language.

He attended Aarhus University from 1969 to 1975 and graduated with a Candidatus Scientiarum in mathematics with computer science.

His interests focused on microprogramming and machine architecture.

He learned the fundamentals of object-oriented programming from its inventor, Kristen Nygaard, who frequently visited Aarhus.

In 1979, he received his PhD in computer science from the University of Cambridge, where his research on distributed computing was supervised by David Wheeler.

In 1979, Stroustrup began his career as a member of technical staff in the Computer Science Research Center of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey.

There, he began his work on C++ and programming techniques.

In 1979, he began developing C++ (initially called "C with Classes").

In his own words, he "invented C++, wrote its early definitions, and produced its first implementation [...] chose and formulated the design criteria for C++, designed all its major facilities, and was responsible for the processing of extension proposals in the C++ standards committee."

C++ was made generally available in 1985.

For non-commercial use, the source code of the compiler and the foundation libraries was the cost of shipping (US$75); this was before Internet access was common.

Stroustrup also published a textbook for the language in 1985, The C++ Programming Language.

The key language-technical areas of contribution of C++ are:

Stroustrup was a founding member of the C++ standards committee (from 1989, it was an ANSI committee and from 1991 an ISO committee) and has remained an active member ever since.

For 24 years he chaired the subgroup chartered to handle proposals for language extensions (Evolution Working Group).

Selected honors

Fellowships

Honorary doctorates and professorships

Stroustrup has written or co-written a number of publications, including the books:

In all, these books have been translated into 21 languages.

More than 100 academic articles, including:

More than a hundred technical reports for the C++ standards committee (WG21)

In 1993, he was made a Bell Labs fellow and in 1996, an AT&T Fellow.

Stroustrup documented his principles guiding the design of C++ and the evolution of the language in his 1994 book, The Design and Evolution of C++, and three papers for ACM's History of Programming Languages conferences.

Stroustrup was the head of AT&T Bell Labs' Large-scale Programming Research department, from its creation until late 2002.

From 2002 to 2014, Stroustrup was the College of Engineering Chair Professor in Computer Science at Texas A&M University.

From 2011, he was made a University Distinguished Professor.

Stroustrup served as a visiting professor of computer science at Columbia University beginning in 2014, where he has been a full professor since 2022.

Stroustrup was born in Aarhus, Denmark.

His family was working class, and he attended local schools.

From January 2014 to April 2022, Stroustrup was a technical fellow and managing director in the technology division of Morgan Stanley in New York City and a visiting professor in computer science at Columbia University.

As of July 2022, Stroustrup is a full professor of Computer Science at Columbia University.

Stroustrup is best known for his work on C++.