Nancy Lynch

<h2 id="education-and-early-life">Education and early life</h2>
Lynch was born in <a href="/facts/Brooklyn/UnUzxCFe">Brooklyn</a>, and her academic training was in mathematics. She attended <a href="/facts/Brooklyn_College/QgruaF7m">Brooklyn College</a> and MIT, where she received her <a href="/facts/Ph.D./paJumdN8">Ph.D.</a> in 1972 under the supervision of <a href="/facts/Albert_R._Meyer/31B10sEp">Albert R. Meyer</a>.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2">2</a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3">3</a>

<h2 id="work">Work</h2>
She served on the math and computer science faculty at several other universities, including <a href="/facts/Tufts_University/yglpUbAL">Tufts University</a>, the <a href="/facts/University_of_Southern_California/N0v9R5gs">University of Southern California</a>, <a href="/facts/Florida_International_University/TTAQr7rp">Florida International University</a>, and the <a href="/facts/Georgia_Institute_of_Technology/HKtrUSao">Georgia Institute of Technology</a> (Georgia Tech), prior to joining the MIT faculty in 1982. Since then, she has been working on applying mathematics to the tasks of understanding and constructing complex distributed systems.
Her 1985 work with <a href="/facts/Michael_J._Fischer/22ojkBNd">Michael J. Fischer</a> and <a href="/facts/Mike_Paterson/VAn2V6mL">Mike Paterson</a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4">4</a> on <a href="/facts/Consensus_(computer_science)/rC0eH88V">consensus problems</a> received the <a href="/facts/PODC_Influential-Paper_Award/WUMmjNwF">PODC Influential-Paper Award</a> in 2001.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5">5</a> Their work showed that in an asynchronous distributed system, consensus is impossible if there is one processor that crashes. On their contribution, Jennifer Welch wrote that "this result has had a monumental impact in distributed computing, both theory and practice. Systems designers were motivated to clarify their claims concerning under what circumstances the systems work."<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6">6</a>
She is the author of numerous research articles about distributed algorithms and impossibility results, and about formal modeling and validation of distributed systems (see, e.g., <a href="/facts/Input/output_automaton/fpxeHj0P">input/output automaton</a>). She is the author of the graduate textbook "Distributed Algorithms".<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:7" href="#fn:7">7</a> She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the <a href="/facts/National_Academy_of_Engineering/6RCqfvXM">National Academy of Engineering</a>, and an ACM Fellow.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8">8</a>

<h2 id="recognition">Recognition</h2>
<ul><li>1997: <a href="/facts/ACM_Fellow/kEuoGr62">ACM Fellow</a></li>
<li>2001: Dijkstra Paper Prize of PODC conference</li>
<li>2001: Elected a member of the <a href="/facts/National_Academy_of_Engineering/6RCqfvXM">National Academy of Engineering</a> for the development of theoretical foundations for distributed computing.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9">9</a></li>
<li>2006: <a href="/facts/Van_Wijngaarden_Award/vobXnR7n">Van Wijngaarden Award</a></li>
<li>2007: <a href="/facts/Knuth_Prize/NHzBNXUE">Knuth Prize</a></li>
<li>2007: Dijkstra Paper Prize of PODC conference</li>
<li>2010: <a href="/facts/IEEE_Emanuel_R._Piore_Award/nRy4dnN3">IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award</a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:10" href="#fn:10">10</a></li>
<li>2012: Athena Lecturer<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:11" href="#fn:11">11</a></li>
<li>2015: <a href="/facts/National_Academy_of_Sciences/M3oePVeG">National Academy of Sciences</a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:12" href="#fn:12">12</a></li></ul>
<h2 id="bibliography">Bibliography</h2>
Lynch, Nancy; Merritt, Michael; Weihl, William; Fekete, Alan (1994). <a href="https://archive.org/details/atomictransactio0000unse/page/476">Atomic Transactions</a>. San Mateo, California: Morgan Kaufmann. pp. <a href="https://archive.org/details/atomictransactio0000unse/page/476">476</a>. <a href="/facts/ISBN_(identifier)/15AdSPa9">ISBN</a> 9781558601048.
Lynch, Nancy A. (1998). <a href="https://archive.org/details/distributedalgor0000lync">Distributed Algorithms</a> (2nd ed.). San Francisco, California: Kaufmann. <a href="/facts/ISBN_(identifier)/15AdSPa9">ISBN</a> 978-1558603486.
Kaynar, Dilsun; Lynch, Nancy; Segala, Roberto; Vaandrager, Frits (2011). The Theory of Timed I/O Automata (2nd ed.). San Rafael, California: Morgan & Claypool. p. 137. <a href="/facts/ISBN_(identifier)/15AdSPa9">ISBN</a> 9781608450039.

<h2 id="external-links">External links</h2>
<ul><li><a href="http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~lynch/">Nancy Lynch's home page at MIT</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.lynchcelebration.org/">"Nancy Lynch Celebration: Sixty and Beyond"</a>. A series of invited lectures at <a href="/facts/Symposium_on_Principles_of_Distributed_Computing/BjmmcevU">PODC</a> 2008 and CONCUR 2008.</li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1">Who's who of American women. Marquis Who's Who, 1973. p. 587. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7yGvrf3-gskC&q=" target="_blank">https://books.google.com/books?id=7yGvrf3-gskC&q=</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">Nancy, Lynch (1972). Relativization of the theory of computational complexity (Ph.D.). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hdl:1721.1/12180. <a href="/wiki/Hdl_(identifier)" target="_blank">/wiki/Hdl_(identifier)</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">Nancy Lynch at the Mathematics Genealogy Project <a href="https://mathgenealogy.org/id.php?id=81227" target="_blank">https://mathgenealogy.org/id.php?id=81227</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">Fischer, M. J.; Lynch, N. A.; Paterson, M. S. (1985). "Impossibility of distributed consensus with one faulty process" (PDF). Journal of the ACM. 32 (2): 374–382. doi:10.1145/3149.214121. S2CID 207660233. <a href="/wiki/Michael_J._Fischer" target="_blank">/wiki/Michael_J._Fischer</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">"PODC Influential Paper Award: 2001". Retrieved 2009-07-06. <a href="http://www.podc.org/influential/2001.html" target="_blank">http://www.podc.org/influential/2001.html</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:6">"PODC Influential Paper Award: 2001". Retrieved 2009-07-06. <a href="http://www.podc.org/influential/2001.html" target="_blank">http://www.podc.org/influential/2001.html</a> <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:7">Lynch, Nancy (1996). Distributed Algorithms. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. ISBN 978-1-55860-348-6. <a href="978-1-55860-348-6" target="_blank">978-1-55860-348-6</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:8">"Nancy A Lynch – Award Winner". Association for Computing Machinery. Retrieved 31 October 2013. <a href="http://awards.acm.org/award_winners/lynch_2276129.cfm" target="_blank">http://awards.acm.org/award_winners/lynch_2276129.cfm</a> <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:9">"NAE Members Directory - Dr. Nancy A. Lynch". NAE. Retrieved December 31, 2010. <a href="http://www.nae.edu/MembersSection/Directory20412/28957.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.nae.edu/MembersSection/Directory20412/28957.aspx</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:10">"IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award Recipients" (PDF). IEEE. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 17, 2013. Retrieved March 20, 2021. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130217000243/http://www.ieee.org/documents/piore_rl.pdf" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20130217000243/http://www.ieee.org/documents/piore_rl.pdf</a> <a href="#fnref:10" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:11">"Lynch named Athena Lecturer". MIT News. 18 April 2012. Retrieved 31 October 2013. <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/lynch-named-athena-lecturer.html" target="_blank">http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/lynch-named-athena-lecturer.html</a> <a href="#fnref:11" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:12">"National Academy of Sciences Members and Foreign Associates Elected". Retrieved 2016-05-05. <a href="http://www.nasonline.org/news-and-multimedia/news/may-3-2016-NAS-Election.html" target="_blank">http://www.nasonline.org/news-and-multimedia/news/may-3-2016-NAS-Election.html</a> <a href="#fnref:12" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></li>
</ol>

Nancy Lynch open-in-new

Nancy Lynch