Edward Yourdon

Edward Nash Yourdon (April 30, 1944 – January 20, 2016) was an American software engineer, computer consultant, author and lecturer, and software engineering methodology pioneer. He was one of the lead developers of the structured analysis techniques of the 1970s and a co-developer of both the Yourdon/Whitehead method for object-oriented analysis/design in the late 1980s and the Coad/Yourdon methodology for object-oriented analysis/design in the 1990s. Yourdon obtained his B.S. in applied mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1965, and did graduate work in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and the Polytechnic Institute of New York. In 1964 Yourdon started working at Digital Equipment Corporation developing FORTRAN programs for the PDP-5 minicomputer and later assembler for the PDP-8. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he worked at a small consulting firm and as an independent consultant. In 1974 Yourdon founded his own consulting firm, YOURDON Inc., to provide educational, publishing, and consulting services. After he sold this firm in 1986 he served on the Board of multiple IT consultancy corporations and was advisor on several research project in the software industry throughout the 1990s. In June 1997, Yourdon was inducted into the Computer Hall of Fame, along with such notables as Charles Babbage, James Martin, Grace Hopper, and Gerald Weinberg. In December 1999 Crosstalk: The Journal of Defense Software Engineering named him one of the ten most influential people in the software field. In the late 1990s, Yourdon became the center of controversy over his beliefs that Y2K-related computer problems could result in severe software failures that would culminate in widespread social collapse. Due to the efforts of Yourdon and thousands of dedicated technologists, developers and project managers, these potential critical system failure points were successfully remediated, thus avoiding the problems Yourdon and others identified early enough to make a difference.