is an artist, novelist, inventor, and Professor of Computer Science at Yale. He earned his BA and MA in Classical Hebrew Literature from Yale and hisPhD from Stony Brook, but came to prominence for his work in computer programming. He was a leading figure in the invention of parallel computation, a computing method which made possible the supercomputer, and he was aided in these advances by Linda, an influential programming language of his own creation. In addition to substantive primary contributions to computer science, Dr Gelernter has remained an astute observer of the field. His book Mirror Worlds presaged the way in which the Internet would dominate our lives, and his numerous recent monographs and articles forcefully illustrate his concerns about attempting to bridge the gap between computers and consciousness. Dr Gelernter’s breakthroughs in the world of technology have been accomplished in consonance with his equal interest in the humanities. Medieval architecture is a self-avowed influence on his work as a coder and instructor, and he considers the work of the programmer to be that of the artist.
His interests are many, and his prolific career—despite a debilitating attempted assassination—emphasizes the vital connective tissues between science and art. His novel 1939 was released to acclaim, and his mixed media artworks have been exhibited in New York, New Haven, and the Yeshiva University Museum. He is a member of the National Council of the Arts, former national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and he formerly sat on the National Endowment for the Arts. Such vantage points have allowed Dr Gelernter to lend his public voice to advocate for the transformative possibilities of education, even while he has concluded in recent studies such as America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture that our current institutions are producing students who are historically and culturally illiterate. He argues that new guiding voices are now needed to redirect an educational system that systematically deprives young people of a tradition of knowledge, a traditionthat has been left to them as a building block for the present.
