{"id":392033,"date":"2017-06-20T12:30:38","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T19:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?p=392033"},"modified":"2017-06-21T15:18:57","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T22:18:57","slug":"charles-p-thacker-visionary-computer-scientist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/charles-p-thacker-visionary-computer-scientist\/","title":{"rendered":"Honoring Charles P. Thacker, a visionary computer scientist who changed the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John Roach, Writer, Microsoft Research<\/em><\/p>\n

Charles P. Thacker (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, a visionary and hands-on electrical engineer who designed the first instances of key computing technologies that define modern life, died June 12 at his home in Palo Alto, California. He was 74.<\/p>\n

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Photo credit: Richard Morgenstein<\/p><\/div>\n

Bringing an idea to life: The personal computer<\/h5>\n

Chuck, as he was known to friends and colleagues designed the Alto (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, the first modern personal computer with a mouse and graphical user interface, in the early 1970s at Xerox\u2019s Palo Alto Research Center. He was also a key player in the development of Ethernet, a system for connecting computers into a local area network; the first multiprocessor workstation; and Microsoft\u2019s Tablet PC (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cChuck has an impressive record of having done the first of quite a few things that we now think of as part of daily life,\u201d said Butler Lampson<\/a>, a technical fellow at Microsoft\u2019s New England research lab.<\/p>\n

Thacker and Lampson collaborated on several projects including the Alto, an early electronic book reader called the Lectrice they developed at Digital Equipment Corporation\u2019s Systems Research Center in the early 1990s and the Tablet PC at Microsoft, which launched in 2001.<\/p>\n

\u201cChuck was a breakthrough thinker and doer,\u201d said Eric Horvitz<\/a>, technical fellow and director of Microsoft Research Labs. \u201cHe was pure genius with a can-do spirit who combined deep knowledge of computing with an understanding of the pace of change at any given moment and of where things were headed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cambridge research lab<\/h5>\n

After stints as a founding member of Xerox\u2019s Palo Alto Research Center and Digital Equipment Corporation\u2019s Systems Research Center, Thacker was recruited in 1997 to help launch Microsoft\u2019s research lab in Cambridge, UK<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among Thacker\u2019s first hires was artificial intelligence expert Chris Bishop<\/a>, who is now the lab director. Bishop remembers Thacker for his rigorous, hands-on approach to engineering.<\/p>\n

For example, in the early days of the Cambridge lab, Bishop walked into Thacker\u2019s office to the sight of a Sony VAIO laptop disassembled into hundreds of pieces strewn across three tables. Bishop asked if Thacker was trying to reverse engineer the laptop to better understand how it was built. Thacker replied, \u201cOh, no, I am going to reassemble it as an electronic book reader.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bishop smiled, thinking to himself, \u201cDream on, Chuck.\u201d Two days later, Thacker showed Bishop the prototype e-reader with the keyboard glued to the back of the screen in a way that allowed the fingers to naturally fall on certain keys to control the device. \u201cThis was years before the Kindle and Nook,\u201d Bishop noted.<\/p>\n

Tablet PC<\/h5>\n

Thacker built on the prototype e-reader when he returned to the US and joined the group working on the Microsoft Tablet PC, which launched nearly a decade before tablet computing successfully penetrated the consumer market.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis ability to latch on to something at a time when it was feasible to do it \u2013 not at a time when it was going to be a huge market success, but at a time when it was feasible to do it and lay the groundwork for things that later came to be thought of as absolutely fundamental parts of computing \u2013 was extraordinary,\u201d said Lampson.<\/p>\n\t\n\t<\/iframe>\n\t\n

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The computer science community regularly acknowledged Thacker\u2019s contributions to the field. He was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> in 1994, won the Charles Stark Draper Prize (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> in 2004, the IEEE John von Neumann (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> medal in 2007 and the ACM\u2019s A.M. Turing Award (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> in 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cChuck was the engineer\u2019s engineer, so knowledgeable, hands-on and down-to-earth,\u201d said Harry Shum (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, executive vice president of Microsoft\u2019s AI and Research group. \u201cWe are very fortunate to have been associated with Chuck for many years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related links:<\/h5>\n