May 11, 1930 — Edsger Dijkstra Was Born

Dijkstra’s algorithm is one of the core algorithms taught in almost every computer science program. To be honest, when I first heard about it, I assumed Dijkstra was some mathematician from Euler’s era. The algorithm is so elegant and memorable, yet incredibly practical for working with graphs. Later, I realized that Dijkstra was actually our contemporary.

Edsger Dijkstra was born on May 11, 1930, in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Throughout his career, he pushed the idea that programming is intellectual work, not just a technical routine. Besides creating his famous algorithm, Dijkstra became known for a series of influential papers where he argued for clean, maintainable code and explored the complexity of software and concurrent execution.

Some of his most important works:

• Dijkstra’s algorithm — published in 1959 in the paper “A note on two problems in connexion with graphs”
• Popularization of recursion — the 1960 paper “Recursive Programming”
• Semaphores and concurrent programming — the 1965 paper “Solution of a Problem in Concurrent Programming Control”
• Criticism of goto statements — the 1968 paper “Go To Statement Considered Harmful”
• “A Discipline of Programming” — Dijkstra’s book arguing that programming should be treated as a mathematical discipline