If you are a LaTeX user, today's a day for you to rejoice. TeX --
the underlying typesetting engine -- was designed by Don Knuth, who won
the highest computer science honour way back in 1974. Now, with Lamport
-- who enriched the software significantly,
and to whom the 'La' part of LaTeX is credited -- getting the Turing
award, we can say that LaTeX now is 'Turing Complete'! :)
Of
course, Lamport's contributions to Computer Science go far deeper than
just LaTeX. He has made fundamental contributions to distributed and
concurrent computing. To appreciate this, you
needn't have read his papers, or done a course of distributed computing.
If you as much as have made one call with your cell-phone, or have used
the Internet, you have already allowed Lamport's work to touch your
life in a profound way.
Let's cheer Leslie for this much deserved, and probably long delayed, honour!
