David R. Wallace

{{Short description|American mathematician and inventor (1942–2012)}}

David R. Wallace (December 15, 1942 – March 2, 2012) was an American mathematician and inventor. He is known for the Wallace algorithm as well as “Software Cloaking”, a patented method for hiding the internal operations of computer programs.

Education and professional career

Wallace received degrees in mathematics from Columbia University (BA), University of California at Berkeley (MA) and a Ph.D in 1975 at Tulane University with his dissertation Permutation Groupoids and Circuit Bases: An Algebraic Resolution of Some Graph Structures.

Permutation Groupoids and Circuit Bases: An Algebraic Resolution of Some Graph Structures, 1975. Advised by Karl Hofmann.

He was a professor at Emory University, DePauw and Boston University.{{Citation needed|date=May 2008}} He was Chief Software Architect for Alliant, Chief compiler architect at Sun Microsystems, and co-founder of Determina (now part of VMware).

Inventions

Wallace was the inventor of the Wallace algorithm, a method for determining the dependence between array references in scientific programs for the purpose of parallelization.*Wallace, David, "Dependence of Multi-Dimensional Array References," Proceedings of the International Conference on Supercomputing, July 1988, pp. 418–428.

He was also the inventor of “Software Cloaking”, a technology for preventing reverse engineering. This process is primarily used to prevent hackers from cracking DRM systems. Cloaking hides the internal operation of a program using mathematical transformations. His patent for this technology, “System and Method for Cloaking Software,” was granted by the USPTO in February 2001.US Patent 6,192,475, USPTO, USA, 2001.

David R. Wallace had several patents pending for a new form of software security called "Greencastle Vulnerability Shield".

References

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  • {{US Patent|6192475}}
  • {{MathGenealogy|id=30577}}
  • {{Cite news |date=March 4, 2012 |title=David Wallace - Obituary |url=http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?n=david-wallace&pid=156250319 |newspaper=San Francisco Chronicle}}
  • {{Cite news |title=Obituaries |url=http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/winter12/obituaries |newspaper=Columbia College Today |issue=Winter 2012}}

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Category:1942 births

Category:2012 deaths

Category:Columbia College (New York) alumni

Category:UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni

Category:Tulane University alumni

Category:Emory University faculty

Category:DePauw University faculty

Category:Boston University faculty

Category:Sun Microsystems people

Category:American inventors

Category:American computer security academics