Alan Kay

President, Viewpoints Research Institute and Computer Scientist

Alan Kay is the president of Viewpoints Research Institute, where he was deeply involved in the One Laptop Per Child initiative. He is also an adjunct professor of computer science at UCLA and a CHM Fellow, inducted in 1999. Kay is one of the earliest pioneers of object-oriented programming, personal computing, and graphical user interfaces. He participated in the design of the ARPAnet and conceived the Dynabook, a laptop personal computer for children. At Xerox PARC, he invented Smalltalk, the first completely object-oriented programming, authoring, and operating system, and participated in the development of the Alto, the first modern networked personal computer. Kay has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Arts, the Computer History Museum and has received many awards and a number of honorary doctoral degrees.

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