Biography:Alexander G. Fraser
Alexander G. Fraser | |
|---|---|
 Alexander G. Fraser in 2012 | |
| Born | 8 June 1937 Surrey, England |
| Died | 13 June 2022 |
| Citizenship | British |
| Alma mater | |
| Awards | 2001 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | computer networking
|
Alexander G. Fraser (8 June 1937 – 13 June 2022),[1][2] also known as A. G. Fraser and Sandy Fraser, was a noted British-United States of America computer scientist.
Early Life and Education
Fraser was born in Surrey, England and spent the war years with his family in Lancashire and subsequently in Weston Super Mare. Fraser received his B.Sc. degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Bristol University in 1958, and his Ph.D. in Computing Science from Cambridge University in 1969.
Career
Starting at Cambridge
Between degrees he worked at Ferranti, where he was responsible for developing the Nebula programming language[3] for the Orion operating system. From 1966 to 1969 he was Assistant Director of Research at Cambridge[4] where in 1967 he designed and implemented the Titan computer's file system[5] and worked on file archival, privacy, and persistent names.
Moving to AT&T
He moved to AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1969 where he invented cell-based networks[6] that anticipated Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)[7] and co-developed a reduced instruction set computer prototype with techniques for instruction set optimization. He subsequently became director of its Computing Science Research Center (1982), Executive Director (1987), and Associate Vice President for Information Science Research (1994). As Vice President for Research, he founded AT&T Laboratories in 1996, and in 1998 was named AT&T Chief Scientist.
A notable project in the late 1980s was the Experimental Universities Network (XUNET) project to promote graduate research on computer networks.[8] Eight universities and labs across the country were linked by a network of Datakit Virtual Circuit Switches joined by high-speed links to provide a wide area systems research laboratory where student researchers could run network experiments. His 1983 paper was among the first the first to propose ubiquitous networking connectivity:
Ubiquity in telecommunications suggests a standard wall socket distributed about as widely as electric power outlets are now. An appliance plugged into one of these sockets will be able to reach, by some simple and standard procedure, another appliance plugged into any other socket.
Subsequently in the 1990s, he worked on bringing high-speed networking to every home in the USA and supported the development of applications to utilise this capacity, most notably resulting in the MPEG AAC international standard. Bjarne Stroustrup started work on the C++ language during this time to support these networked applications.[9]
Retirement and Fraser Research
After his retirement in 2002 he established Fraser Research in Princeton, New Jersey.[10] He resumed his initiative towards designing a next-generation Internet architecture as part of the 100x100 future internet project.[11]
The Cambridge Computer Laboratory held a posthumous memorial[12][13] to recount Fraser's achievements, and also published his last monograph[14] which collates Fraser's research on his clean-slate design for a next-generation Internet.
Awards and Recognition
Fraser was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the British Computer Society and IEEE for contributions and leadership in the design of switched virtual circuit networks.[15] He has received the 1989 Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award "for contributions to computer communications and the invention of virtual-circuit switching",[16] the 1992 SIGCOMM Award for "pioneering concepts, such as virtual circuit switching, space-division packet switching, and window flow control",[17] and the 2001 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal "for pioneering contributions to the architecture of communication networks through the development of virtual circuit switching technology".[18][19]
References
- ↑ "Alexander "Sandy" Fraser, 85, former Bernardsville resident, communication network pioneer, avid cyclist". New Jersey Hills Media Group. 30 June 2022. https://www.newjerseyhills.com/bernardsville_news/obituaries/alexander-sandy-fraser-85-former-bernardsville-resident-communication-network-pioneer-avid-cyclist/article_c8609042-d3cc-51d2-a79b-089ec523d6c1.html.
- ↑ "Alexander Sandy Fraser". https://www.thekimblefuneralhome.com/obituary/alexander-fraser.
- ↑ Braunholtz, T. G. H.; Fraser, A. G.; Hunt, P. M. (1961). "NEBULA: A Programming Language for Data Processing". The Computer Journal 4 (3). doi:10.1093/comjnl/4.3.197.
- ↑ "Death of Computer Science Pioneer Sandy Fraser". Cambridge Computer Laboratory. 2022. https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/death-computer-science-pioneer-sandy-fraser.
- ↑ Fraser, A. G. (1969). "Integrity of a Mass Storage Filing System". The Computer Journal 12 (1). doi:10.1093/comjnl/12.1.1.
- ↑ Alexander Gibson Fraser, "Digital data communications system packet switch", US patent 3979733, issued 1976-09-07
- ↑ Origins of ATM, lecture by A. G. (Sandy) Fraser on YouTube
- ↑ Fraser, A.G.; Kalmanek, C. R.; Kaplan, A. E.; Marshall, W. T.; Restrick, R. C. (1992). "Xunet 2: a nationwide testbed in high-speed networking". IEEE INFOCOM '92: The Conference on Computer Communications. 2. Florence, Italy. pp. 582-589. doi:10.1109/INFCOM.1992.263452.
- ↑ Bjarne Stroustrup (January 1996). "A history of C++: 1979--1991". History of programming languages II: 699-769. doi:10.1145/234286.1057836.
- ↑ "Fraser Research". 2007. https://fraserresearch.org.
- ↑ "100x100network. 100 × 100 clean slate project". Archived from the original on August 19, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20100819222330/http://100x100network.org/. Retrieved October 15, 2011.
- ↑ "Sandy Fraser: a memorial to his achievements". Cambridge Computer Laboratory. 2023. https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/sandy-fraser-memorial-his-achievements.
- ↑ Sandy Fraser memorial seminar on YouTube
- ↑ Template:Cite tech report
- ↑ "IEEE Fellows 1989 | IEEE Communications Society". https://www.comsoc.org/membership/ieee-fellows/1989.
- ↑ "IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award Recipients". https://www.ieee.org/content/dam/ieee-org/ieee/web/org/about/awards/recipients/kobayashi_rl.pdf.
- ↑ "SIGCOMM Award Recipients | acm sigcomm". http://www.sigcomm.org/awards/sigcomm-awards.
- ↑ "IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal Recipients". IEEE. http://www.ieee.org/documents/hamming_rl.pdf.
- ↑ 2001 IEEE Honors Ceremony on YouTube
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