Stephen J. Garland ’63

Stephen J. Garland ’63, Ph.D., died on March 26. Steve was from Pittsburghand attended Mt. Lebanon High School, where he was active in the yearbook, newspaper, dramatics, magazine, and orchestra. At Dartmouth he majored in mathematics and was elected Phi Beta Kappa. He was comptroller of WDCR and a member of Green Key. As an undergraduate Steve and colleagues developed Dartmouth ALGOL 30 on the College’s new LGP computer. Their success with ALGOL 30 fed into efforts by professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz to create Dartmouth Time-Sharing System and BASIC programming language. After earning a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1967 at the University of California, Steve returned to Dartmouth as professor of mathematics and computer science. With Kurtz, he helped create a master’s program in computer and information science. Steve inherited responsibility for enhancing the BASIC programming language when Kemeny became president of the College. Present at the birth of timesharing and the emergence of computer science as an academic discipline, Steve wrote four books and 60 papers on these subjects. He also chaired the College Board Advanced Placement Computer Science Development Committee. In 1985 Steve moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory as principal research scientist, retiring in 2005. He then became a teacher at Temple University Osher Learning Institute and a member of its advisory council. His first wife, Sandi, and second wife, Ardith, predeceased him. He is survived by three daughters and grandchildren.