Clarke, Edmund M.

Edmund M. Clarke, in full Edmund Melson Clarke, Jr., (born July 27, 1945, Newport News, Virginia, U.S.—died December 22, 2020, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), American computer scientist and cowinner of the 2007 A.M. Turing Award, the highest honour in computer science.

Clarke earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1967 from the University of Virginia, a master’s degree in mathematics in 1968 from Duke University, and a doctorate in computer science in 1976 from Cornell University. Clarke then taught at Duke before moving in 1978 to Harvard University. In 1982 he joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, where in 1995 he became the first recipient of the FORE Systems professorship, an endowed chair in the School of Computer Science. Clarke was named a University Professor in 2008; he became professor emeritus in 2015.

Clarke and his former Harvard graduate student E. Allen Emerson—and, independently, Joseph Sifakis of France—were cited in the Turing Award for their work in 1981 on model-checking software, which is used to automate the detection of logic errors in sequential circuit designs and in software. In addition to this work, Clarke contributed to the theoretical and practical development of the field of theorem-proving software.