Photo: ICLTSG / CC BY-SA 4.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Jack Dongarra is the kind of figure I most enjoy spotlighting, the quiet engine behind things we take for granted. A Chicago-born computer scientist, he authored numerical libraries like LAPACK and EISPACK that silently power supercomputers, weather models, and scientific research across the planet. His 2021 Turing Award, computing's equivalent of a Nobel, finally put a public face on decades of foundational work. I'm drawn to people who advance humanity from the basement rather than the stage, and Dongarra strengthened the very floor that modern science stands on. To me, that invisible influence is far more impressive than any spotlight.
Overview
Jack Joseph Dongarra (born July 18, 1950) is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is a University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Jack Dongarra
- Name (Japanese)
- ジャック・ドンガラ
- Reading
- じゃっく・どんがら
- Born
- July 18, 1950 (age 75)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Cancer / Tiger
- Origin
- Chicago, Illinois, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- mathematician / computer scientist / engineer / university teacher
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- University of New Mexico
Awards & achievements
- 2013 Ken Kennedy Award
- 2003 Sidney Fernbach Award
- 2001 ACM Fellow
- IEEE Fellow
- 2009 Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
- Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
- 2019 Foreign Member of the Royal Society
- 2021 Turing Award
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
5. Works & records
| Category | Title | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notable work | EISPACK | — | |
| Notable work | LAPACK | — |
6. Links
Mathematician — see all → · Computer scientist — 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.