American computer scientist
Ben Shneiderman (born August 21, 1947) is an American computer scientist, a Distinguished University Professor in the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science, which is part of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the founding director (1983-2000) of the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab. He conducted fundamental research in the field of human–computer interaction, developing new ideas, methods, and tools such as the direct manipulation interface, and his eight rules of design.
Early life and education.
Born in New York, Shneiderman, attended the Bronx High School of Science, and received a BS in Mathematics and Physics from the City College of New York in 1968. He then went on to study at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he received an MS in Computer Science in 1972 and graduated with a PhD in 1973.
Career.
Shneiderman started his academic career at the State University of New York at Farmingdale in 1968 as instructor at the Department of Data Processing. In the last year before his graduation he was an instructor at the Department of Computer Science of Stony Brook University (then called State University of New York at Stony Brook). In 1973 he was appointed assistant professor at the Indiana University, Department of Computer Science. In 1976 he moved to the University of Maryland. He started out as assistant professor in its Department of Information Systems Management, and became associate professor in 1979. In 1983 he moved to its Department of Computer Science as associate professor, and was promoted to full professor in 1989. In 1983 he was the Founding Director of its Human-Computer Interaction Lab, which he directed until 2000.
In 2002 his book "Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies" was Winner of an IEEE-USA Award for Distinguished Contributions Furthering Public Understanding of the Profession. His 2016 book, "The New ABCs of Research: Achieving Breakthrough Collaborations", encourages applied and basic research to be combined. In 2019, he published "Encounters with HCI Pioneers: A Personal History and Photo Journal", and "Human-Centered AI" in 2022.
Awards and honors.
Shneiderman was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1997, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2001, a Member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2010, an IEEE Fellow in 2012, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2015. He is an ACM CHI Academy Member and received their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. He received the IEEE Visualization Career Award in 2012 and was inducted into the IEEE VIS Academy in 2019. In 2021 he received the InfoVis Conference Test of Time Award with co-authors Ben Bederson and Martin M. Wattenberg.
He received Honorary Doctorates from the University of Guelph (Canada) in 1995, the University of Castile-La Mancha (Spain) in 2010, Stony Brook University in 2015, the University of Melbourne in 2017, Swansea University (in Wales, UK) in 2018, and the University of Pretoria (in South Africa) in 2018.
Personal life.
Shneiderman resides in Bethesda, Maryland. He is the nephew of photographer David Seymour.
Work.
Nassi–Shneiderman diagram.
In the 1973 article "Flowchart techniques for structured programming" presented at a 1973 SIGPLAN meeting Isaac Nassi and Shneiderman argued:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;With the advent of structured programming and GOTO-less programming a method is needed to model computation in simply ordered structures, each representing a complete thought possibly defined in terms of other thoughts as yet undefined. A model is needed which prevents unrestricted transfers of control and has a control structure closer to languages amenable to structured programming. We present an attempt at such a model.
References.
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