William D. Clinger

Associate Professor Emeritus

  • Functional and higher-order programming languages
  • Syntax and semantics theories
  • Computer hardware and software
  • PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

William D. Clinger is a professor emeritus in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University.

Clinger proved the correctness of a commercial compiler’s algorithm for generating code, invented efficient algorithms for hygienic macro expansion and converting decimal scientific notation into the nearest binary floating-point approximation, and contributed to development of the IEEE/ANSI standard for Scheme.

He his PhD students also designed promising new algorithms for automatic garbage collection. Several of these algorithms have been tested in Larceny, which Clinger and his students originally developed as a vehicle for experimental research on compiler optimization and garbage collection. Larceny has now become one of the leading multi-platform implementations of the Scheme programming language.