Lee Edward McMahon (October 24, 1931[2]–February 15, 1989[3]) was an American computer scientist.
Lee Edward McMahon | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | February 15, 1989 | (aged 57)
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Harvard University |
Known for | sed, McMahon system tournament |
Spouse | Helen G McMahon |
Children | Michael McMahon, Catherine McMahon |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Computer science |
Institutions | Bell Labs[1] |
Thesis | Grammatical analysis as a part of understanding a sentence (1963) |
McMahon was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to father Leo E. McMahon and mother Catherine McCarthy. He grew up in St. Louis and attended St. Louis University High School.[4] In 1955 he received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from St. Louis University.[5] McMahon was awarded a regular graduate fellowship from the St. Louis University for study in psychology at Harvard University, where he then obtained a Ph.D. in psychology.[6][7] His Ph.D. thesis at Harvard University was published in 1963 with the title "Grammatical analysis as a part of understanding a sentence".
He was married to Helen G McMahon, and they had two children, Michael and Catherine.[1]
McMahon worked for Bell Labs from 1963 up until his death in 1989. He worked initially as a Linguistics Researcher and focussed around a language called FASE (Fundamentally Analyzable Simplified English) with the goal of improving communication between humans and computers.[8]
McMahon officially joined the Bell Labs Computing Research Center in 1975.[1]
A project which attempted to clarify the authorship of The Federalist Papers connected him to Robert Morris and began his involvement with early Unix development.[9]
McMahon is best known for his contributions to early versions of the Unix operating system, in particular the sed stream editor.[10] McMahon contributed to the development of comm, qsort, grep, index, cref, cu, and Datakit.[11]
McMahon worked on the creation of a pairing system to go together with Bob Ryder of Bell Labs in the early 1960s.[12]
The system was widely used in go tournaments - for example in the U.S. Championship tournaments of 1986.[13]