Barbara Liskov
American computer scientist
Barbara Jane Liskov (née Huberman; born November 7, 1939) is an American computer scientist who has made pioneering contributions to programming languages and distributed computing. Her notable work includes the introduction of abstract data types and the accompanying principle of data abstraction, along with the Liskov substitution principle, which applies these ideas to object-oriented programming, subtyping, and inheritance. Her work was recognized with the 2008 Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science.
Liskov is one of the earliest women to have been granted a doctorate in computer science in the United States, and the second woman to receive the Turing Award. She is currently an Institute Professor and Ford Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Early life and education
Liskov was born November 7, 1939, in Los Angeles, California, the eldest of Jane (née Dickhoff) and Moses Huberman's four children. She earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics with a minor in physics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1961. At Berkeley, she had only one other female classmate in her major. She applied to graduate mathematics programs at Berkeley and Princeton. At the time, Princeton was not accepting female students in mathematics.
“Barbara Liskov” enters the record as american computer scientist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Barbara, Liskov and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16080922. VIAF identifies the subject as 44337197. The Library of Congress control number is n81090977. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 2008 and 1961.
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This entry incorporates text from “Barbara Liskov” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.