Joel Moses

Joel Moses (born 1941) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Biography

Joel Moses was born in Mandatory Palestine in 1941 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1954. He attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn, New York.

He received his undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Columbia University and a master's degree in Mathematics, also from Columbia.

Under the supervision of Marvin Minsky, Moses received his doctorate in Mathematics at MIT in 1967 with a thesis entitled Symbolic Integration.

This laid the groundwork for the Macsyma symbolic mathematics program that was created at MIT largely under his supervision between 1969 and 1983.

Macsyma was able to solve problems such as simplification, factorization of polynomials, indefinite integration (see Antiderivative), solution of differential equations, and other higher-order mathematical questions.

He is credited with coining the term Big ball of mud (software lacking architecture).