# Barbara Liskov ![[50 Resources/51 Attachments/51.03 Public/2026-05-04 Barbara Liskov.jpg|400]] Barbara Liskov is an American computer scientist and Institute Professor at MIT, where she leads the Programming Methodology Group at CSAIL. She is one of the first women in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in computer science (Stanford, 1968) and a pioneer of programming languages and distributed computing. She designed the influential CLU language in the 1970s, which introduced abstract data types and iterators — concepts that shaped every modern object-oriented language since. Her foundational work on data abstraction and behavioral subtyping led to the [[Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP)]], formulated in her 1987 OOPSLA keynote and refined in the 1994 Liskov–Wing paper "A Behavioral Notion of Subtyping". She received the **Turing Award in 2008** for "contributions to practical and theoretical foundations of programming language and system design, especially related to data abstraction, fault tolerance, and distributed computing." She also designed the Argus and Thor distributed systems and co-authored *Program Development in Java*. ## Known For - [[Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP)]] — the "L" in [[SOLID Principles]] - CLU programming language — introduced abstract data types (ADTs) - Argus and Thor distributed systems - 2008 ACM Turing Award - 2004 John von Neumann Medal ## Quotes ```dataview LIST FROM [[]] WHERE contains(tags, "type/quote") ``` ## Books ```dataview LIST FROM [[]] WHERE contains(tags, "type/book") ``` ## Related - [[Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP)]] - [[SOLID Principles]] - [[Design by Contract]] ## References - https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/barbara-liskov - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Liskov - https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/liskov_1108679.cfm