David A. Patterson

Patterson is the kind of giant whose name most people never learn, yet whose work touches every device they own. What strikes me most is the quiet persistence: nearly four decades teaching at Berkeley, then refusing to coast into retirement and instead becoming a working engineer at Google. The 2017 Turing Award felt less like a coronation than an overdue acknowledgment of foundations laid long before. I have deep respect for builders like him who shape the architecture beneath everything while staying largely invisible. In an era obsessed with founders and faces, Patterson reminds me that the most consequential people often work in the background.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

David A. Patterson

Name (Japanese)

デイビッド・パターソン

Reading

でいびっど・ぱたーそん

Born

November 16, 1947 (age 78)

Origin

Evergreen Park, Illinois, United States

Occupation

computer scientist / engineer / researcher / university teacher

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Boar

High school

South High School

University

University of California, Los Angeles

Awards & achievements

• 2000 IEEE John von Neumann Medal
• 2000 IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal
• Computer History Museum Fellow
• 2008 Eckert–Mauchly Award
• 2011 Alan D. Berenbaum Distinguished Service Award
• 2017 Turing Award
• 1994 ACM Fellow
• 2018 honorary doctor of the Tsinghua University

• Official sitehttps://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/patterson.html
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%20Patterson%20(computer%20scientist)
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%87%E3%82%A4%E3%83%93%E3%83%83%E3%83%89%E3%83%BB%E3%83%91%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BD%E3%83%B3%20(%E8%A8%88%E7%AE%97%E6%A9%9F%E7%A7%91%E5%AD%A6%E8%80%85)
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q92851

Tags

• Illinois
• computer scientist
• engineer
• researcher

Last updated

September 18, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.