John Hennessy
In 2000, Dr. John L. Hennessy was chosen to serve as the tenth President of Stanford University. A computer scientist and entrepreneur as well as educator, Hennessy is responsible for crucial innovations in computer programming that our present information age possible. John Hennesy's interest in computers began in adolescence. As a high school student on Long Island, he built home computers from mail-order kits. After earning a Ph.D. at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, he joined the faculty of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California as an assistant professor of electrical engineering. In the 1960s and '70s, information technology was defined by mainframe computer systems, running instructions printed on punch cards or large spools of tape. Programming required lines and lines of code to accomplish simple tasks. In the 1980s, the old technology was giving way to the microprocessor, but the potential efficiencies of the new hardware could not be realized without a co