Sad news, W. R. Stevens (fwd)

Doug Tody wrote on Sep 03, 1999

This probably should not be posted here but I am going to make an exception
and do so anyway.

Most of you will probably not know of Rich Stevens except through his
recent books on Unix and network programming, which are without equal.
Rich was one of (what still seems to me) a remarkable group of software
people at what was then known as Kitt Peak in the late 70s.  In later
years he moved back to Tucson to make a living consulting and writing his
books.  If you have a copy of "Unix Network Programming" take a look inside
the back cover and you will see our local network, which served as the
model for this examples in the book.  Rich left KPNO around the time that
VAX/VMS was king but some of us were pushing some "new" things called Unix
and C, the Internet existed largely on uucp links, we were still using
FORTH for real time systems, and IRAF was just starting to be written.
Rich couldn't have been much older than his mid-fifties.

Doug Tody


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 12:50:18 -0700 (MST)
To: tucson_all@gemini
From: Jack Harvey  NSO <jharvey@gemini>
Subject: Sad news, W. R. Stevens


I am sorry to report that W. R. (Rich) Stevens passed away on Wednesday.

Rich was a member of the Solar Program of KPNO in the 1970s and later
headed the computer program here in Tucson. He was the major force
for our transition from old-fashioned main-frame computers (using punched
cards as input and proprietary software) to VAXs, VT-100s and UNIX.
He also wrote a lot of software for the mountain using FORTH and
produced manuals for the FORTH language that are still in use. After
he left us, He became Vice-President of a medical software system
company in Connecticut. When that company was bought out by 3M,
he and his family returned to Tucson where he became an author and
consultant. The books that he authored in Tucson are widely considered
to be the standard references for many important aspects of modern
computing. He is survived by his wife Sally and three children.

A memorial service will be held Tuesday, Sept. 7 at noon at St. Phillips
near Campbell and River.

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Last post on Sep 03, 1999