John L. Hennessy

Early life and education

Hennessy was raised in Huntington, New York, as one of six children. His father was an aerospace engineer, and his mother was a teacher before raising her children. He is of Irish-Catholic descent, with some of his ancestors arriving in America during the potato famine in the 19th century.

He earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University, and his master's degree and Doctor of Philosophy in computer science from Stony Brook University.

Career and research

Hennessy became a Stanford faculty member in 1977. In 1981, he began the MIPS project to investigate RISC processors, and in 1984, he used his sabbatical year to found MIPS Computer Systems Inc. to commercialize the technology developed by his research. In 1987, he became the Willard and Inez Kerr Bell Endowed Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Hennessy was director of Stanford's Computer System Laboratory (1989–93), a research center run by Stanford's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments. He was chair of the Department of Computer Science (1994–96) and Dean of the School of Engineering (1996–99).

In 1999, Stanford President Gerhard Casper appointed Hennessy to succeed Condoleezza Rice as Provost of Stanford University. When Casper stepped down to focus on teaching in 2000, the Stanford Board of Trustees named Hennessy to succeed Casper as president. In 2008, Hennessy earned a salary of $1,091,589 ($702,771 base salary, $259,592 deferred benefits, $129,226 non-tax benefits), the 23rd highest among all American university presidents.

Hennessy has been a board member of Google (later Alphabet Inc.), Cisco Systems, Atheros Communications, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2008.

On October 14, 2010, Hennessy was presented a khata by the 14th Dalai Lama before the latter addressed Maples Pavilion.{{cite news|url= http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/october/videos/865.html/|title=President Hennessy salutes the Dalai Lama, and is honored in return|publisher=Stanford University Report|date=October 14, 2010 |access-date=April 26, 2011}}

In December 2010, Hennessy coauthored an editorial with Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust urging the passage of the DREAM Act; the legislation did not pass the 111th United States Congress.

In 2013, Hennessy became a judge for the inaugural Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. He has remained on the judging panel for the subsequent awards in 2015 and 2017.

In June 2015, Hennessy announced that he would step down as Stanford president in summer 2016.

In 2016, Hennessy co-founded the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program; he serves as its inaugural director. The program has a $750 million endowment to fully fund graduate students at Stanford for up to three years. The inaugural class of 51 scholars from 21 countries arrived at Stanford in the fall of 2018.

In February 2018, Hennessy was announced as the new Chairman of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company. That same year, his book Leading Matters: Lessons from My Journey was published by Stanford University Press.

Hennessy has a history of strong interest and involvement in college-level computer education. He co-authored, with David Patterson, two well-known books on computer architecture, Computer Organization and Design: the Hardware/Software Interface and Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, which introduced the DLX RISC architecture. They have been widely used as textbooks for graduate and undergraduate courses since 1990.

Hennessy also contributed to updating Donald Knuth's MIX processor to the MMIX. Both are model computers used in Knuth's classic series, The Art of Computer Programming. MMIX is Knuth's DLX equivalent.

Awards and honors

• Elected to the National Academy of Engineering: 1992 For innovations in computer architecture and software techniques for reduced instruction set computers (RISC), and for quantitative evaluation methods for modern computer architectures.

• {{Awards|award=Fellow of the Computer History Museum|year=2007|title="for fundamental contributions to engineering education, advances in computer architecture, and the integration of leading-edge research with education" |role= |name= {{cite web |access-date = 2013-05-23 |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20121003054212/http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bios/John,Hennessy/ |archive-date = 2012-10-03

• BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award 2020 in Information and Communication Technologies.

• In 2020, he received from the UC Berkeley Academic Senate the Clark Kerr Award for distinguished leadership in higher education.

• In 2022, he was awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize by the National Academy of Engineering alongside Steve Furber, David Patterson and Sophie Wilson for contributions to the invention, development, and implementation of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) chips.

Selected publications

• Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach

Personal life

Hennessy is married to Andrea Berti, whom he met in high school.

References

before= Condoleezza Rice | title= Provost of Stanford University | years= 1999–2000 | after= John Etchemendy before= Gerhard Casper | title= President of Stanford University | years= 2000–2016 | after= Marc Tessier-Lavigne

References

1. Robinson, James. (April 5, 2000). "Provost John L. Hennessy named Stanford's 10th president".
2. Lapin, Lisa. (June 21, 2016). "Stanford President-elect Marc Tessier-Lavigne is preparing to take office Sept. 1".
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12. [http://gamehacking.org/qna/37 Interview with John Hennessy, concerning the video game industry (audio and text) - 2009-06-22]
13. [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt387033z0/ John L. Hennessey Papers]
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