John L. Hennessy

Computer

Birthday September 22, 1952

Birth Sign Virgo

Birthplace Huntington, New York, U.S.

Age 71 years old

Nationality United States

#33835 Most Popular

1952

John LeRoy Hennessy (born September 22, 1952) is an American computer scientist who serves as chairman of Alphabet Inc. (Google).

Hennessy is one of the founders of MIPS Technologies and Atheros while also serving as the tenth President of Stanford University.

1977

Hennessy became a Stanford faculty member in 1977.

1981

In 1981, he began the MIPS project to investigate RISC processors, and in 1984, he used his sabbatical year to found MIPS Computer Systems Inc. to commercialize the technology developed by his research.

1987

In 1987, he became the Willard and Inez Kerr Bell Endowed Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

1989

Hennessy served as director of Stanford's Computer System Laboratory (1989–93), a research center run by Stanford's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments.

1990

They have been widely used as textbooks for graduate and undergraduate courses since 1990.

Hennessy also contributed to updating Donald Knuth's MIX processor to the MMIX.

Both are model computers used in Knuth's classic series, The Art of Computer Programming.

MMIX is Knuth's DLX equivalent.

Hennessy is married to Andrea Berti, whom he met in high school.

1994

He was chair of the Department of Computer Science (1994–96) and Dean of the School of Engineering (1996–99).

1999

In 1999, Stanford President Gerhard Casper appointed Hennessy to succeed Condoleezza Rice as Provost of Stanford University.

2000

When Casper stepped down to focus on teaching in 2000, the Stanford Board of Trustees named Hennessy to succeed Casper as president.

2008

In 2008, Hennessy earned a salary of $1,091,589 ($702,771 base salary, $259,592 deferred benefits, $129,226 non-tax benefits), the 23rd highest among all American university presidents.

Hennessy has served as a board member of Google (later Alphabet Inc.), Cisco Systems, Atheros Communications, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2008.

2010

On October 14, 2010, Hennessy was presented a khata by the 14th Dalai Lama before the latter addressed Maples Pavilion.

In December 2010, Hennessy coauthored an editorial with Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust urging the passage of the DREAM Act; the legislation did not pass the 111th United States Congress.

2013

In 2013, Hennessy became a judge for the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.

2015

He has remained on the judging panel for the subsequent awards in 2015 and 2017.

In June 2015, Hennessy announced that he would step down as Stanford president in summer 2016.

2016

Hennessy announced that he would step down in the summer of 2016.

He was succeeded as president by Marc Tessier-Lavigne.

Marc Andreessen called him "the godfather of Silicon Valley."

In 2016, Hennessy co-founded the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program; he serves as its inaugural director.

The program has a $750 million endowment to fully fund graduate students at Stanford for up to three years.

2017

Along with David Patterson, Hennessy was a recipient of the 2017 Turing Award for their work in developing the reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture, which is now used in 99% of new computer chips.

Hennessy was raised in Huntington, New York, as one of six children.

His father was an aerospace engineer, and his mother was a teacher before raising her children.

2018

The inaugural class of 51 scholars from 21 countries arrived at Stanford in the fall of 2018.

In February 2018, Hennessy was announced as the new Chairman of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company.

Hennessy has a history of strong interest and involvement in college-level computer education.

He co-authored, with David Patterson, two well-known books on computer architecture, Computer Organization and Design: the Hardware/Software Interface and Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, which introduced the DLX RISC architecture.

2019

He is of Irish-Catholic descent, with some of his ancestors arriving in America during the potato famine in the 19th century.

He earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University, and his master's degree and Doctor of Philosophy in computer science from Stony Brook University.