We are excited to announce that the IEEE History Committee has voted to award an IEEE Milestone Plaque for the development of the Intel 8087 floating point coprocessor to our own Professor Emeritus William "Velvel" Kahan, who was the main designer of the 8087’s data types and arithmetic. This design became the basis of the IEEE 754 Floating Point Standard, an effort led by Prof. Kahan, for which he received the 1989 Turing Award, and which was also recognized by an IEEE Milestone Plaque earlier this year, mounted on the 3rd floor of Soda Hall. The 8087 Plaque will be mounted at Intel’s Haifa location.
Prof. Kahan will be giving a practice talk for his upcoming talk at the Heidelberg Laureates Forum (https://www.heidelberg-laureate-forum.org/) this Thursday, September 14, 2023, from 12-1pm in 510 Soda Hall.
IEEE Milestones honor significant technical achievements in all areas associated with IEEE; past Milestones range from high-temperature superconductors, to Maxwell’s equations, to Benjamin Franklin’s work on lightning rods: https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Main_Page. For more detail on the history of the Intel 8087, its historical impact and Prof. Kahan’s role, see https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/w/index.php/Milestone-Proposal:Intel_808...
Final approval of this plaque (and others) will occur at the November meeting of the IEEE Board of Directors.
Congratulations to Professor Kahan!