
Gerald Sussman (2015) - kristianp
https://www.artsy.net/article/ruse-laboratories-gerald-jay-sussman-creator-of-scheme
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curryhoward
In a previous life when I was at MIT, I took a course from Gerry Sussman
called Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics [1]. There was one
lecture where he taught us Scheme, which is a simple enough language that it
can be taught in a lecture. After class I went to his office to ask him a few
questions, and I told him I was interested in functional programming.

He printed out some scheme file from his computer and handed it to me. It was
a derivation of the Y combinator. He patiently walked me through it and
answered my uninformed questions. He was always so enthusiastic about
teaching, and his explanations were more like an exuberant performance than a
traditional lecture.

Fueled by his contagious passion, I've since learned quite a bit about
functional programming and have given many talks on various related topics. My
focus is on type systems and machine-checked proofs, which strangely enough
Gerry Sussman seemed to loathe. I wish I had spent more time picking his brain
while I was there.

If there's one professor I miss from MIT, it's Gerry. He's so knowledgeable
about so many different topics, from physics, to formal logic, to
neuroscience, to AI, to programming language theory. For some topics, there
are certain magic words you can say that will get him going in such a way that
you'll wish you'd brought popcorn.

[1] [https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/sicm-
html/bo...](https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/gjs/6946/sicm-
html/book.html)

