Nachum Dershowitz

Early Life and Education

Nachum Dershowitz is an Israeli-American computer scientist and authority on term rewriting systems and program termination analysis. He earned his B.Sc. summa cum laude from Bar-Ilan University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1979 under Zohar Manna.

Career and Contributions

Dershowitz joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1978, where he served for two decades. In 1998 he moved to Tel Aviv University. He is best known for the Dershowitz-Manna ordering and multiset path ordering, foundational tools for proving termination of term rewrite systems. He also co-authored "Calendrical Calculations" (1997) with Edward Reingold.

Awards and Honors

• 2011: Herbrand Award for Distinguished Contributions to Automated Reasoning

Career Timeline

• 1974: B.Sc. from Bar-Ilan University (summa cum laude)
• 1978: Joined UIUC
• 1979: Ph.D. from Weizmann Institute under Zohar Manna
• 1979: Published "Proving Termination with Multiset Orderings"
• 1997: Co-authored "Calendrical Calculations"
• 1998: Joined Tel Aviv University
• 2011: Herbrand Award