Photo: Peg Skorpinski / CC BY-SA 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
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.
Overview
David Andrew Patterson (born November 16, 1947) is an American computer scientist and academic who has held the position of professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley since 1976. He is a computer pioneer. He announced retirement in 2016 after serving nearly forty years, becoming a distinguished software engineer at Google.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- 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)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Scorpio / Boar
- Origin
- Evergreen Park, Illinois, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- computer scientist / engineer / researcher / university teacher
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- 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
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Computer scientist — see all → · Engineer — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.