Dear members of SIGSAM and the symbolic computation community,
It is our pleasure to inform you that the Prize Selection
Committee of Mark Giesbrecht, Gert-Martin Greuel, Robert Sutor
and the two of us has awarded
The 2017 Richard D. Jenks Memorial Prize for Excellence
in Software Engineering Applied to Computer Algebra
to
Stephen Wolfram
for Wolfram|Alpha and Mathematica
Stephen Wolfram has worked continuously on a symbolic
computation software stack for over 30 years, and remains an
innovator in the field to this day. This is notable for the
Jenks Memorial Prize because quite possibly Richard Jenks was
the only other person to work on such a project for 30 years.
The tightly integrated Wolfram technology stack, as it existed
in 2006, is what paved the way for the development of the
computation/knowledge engine that is Wolfram|Alpha. In
deployment now for nearly a decade, it remains the world's
first, largest, and most-used web and mobile symbolic
computation engine, and it has made the tandem of symbolic
computation and curated knowledge freely available to the world.
In many respects it has helped to define new directions for the
field: consider, for example, how little use was made of curated
data or geographic computation in this field prior to the launch
of Wolfram|Alpha.
Counting earlier work on the predecessor program SMP, Stephen
Wolfram embodies a career-long dedication to the creation,
design and deployment of both the Wolfram Language and
Wolfram|Alpha.
We plan on having the award plaque presented to Stephen Wolfram
in person during the banquet at the 2018 ISSAC in New York.
Sincerely yours,
Chris Brown (SIGSAM Chair and Prize Committee Member)
Erich Kaltofen (Chair of the 2017 Jenks Prize Committee)
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Dr. Christopher Brown * Computer Science Department * U.S. Naval Academy
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