Adele Goldberg

Adele Goldberg (born July 22, 1945) is an American computer scientist. She was one of the co-developers of the programming language Smalltalk-80 and of various concepts related to object-oriented programming while a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), in the 1970s. Early life and education Goldberg was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 22, 1945. Her parents moved to Chicago, Illinois when she was 11, where she spent the rest of her childhood. She enjoyed problem solving and mathematics from a young age and was encouraged by her teachers to pursue mathematics. In 1967, she earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan. Interested in the subject of computing, Goldberg worked as an intern with IBM during the summer of her junior year of college, where she learned how to program unit record machines. After graduating, she attended the University of Chicago, where she received her master's degree (in 1969) and a PhD (in 1973) in information science. She completed her dissertation, "Computer-Assisted Instruction: The Application of Theorem-proving to Adaptive Response Analysis," while working as a research associate at Stanford University. She also served as a visiting researcher at Stanford. Career Goldberg began working at PARC in 1973 as a laboratory and research assistant, and eventually became manager of the System Concepts Laboratory where she, Alan Kay, and other researchers developed the programming language Smalltalk-80. This language developed the object-oriented approach of Simula 67 and introduced a programming environment of overlapping windows on graphic display screens. Smalltalk's innovative format was simple to use and customizable. Objects could be transferred among applications with minimal effort. Goldberg and Kay were involved in the development of design templates, forerunners of the design patterns later used in software design. Along with Kay, she wrote the influential article "Personal Dynamic Media", which predicted a world in which ordinary individuals would use notebook computers to exchange, modify, and redistribute personal media. This paper outlined the vision for the Dynabook.