The Association for Computing Machinery this morning announced its first 2008 Turing Award recipient. Barbara Liskov was the first American woman to earn a Ph.D. in computer science. She also has quite a number of obligations at M.I.T. She is a Ford Professor in Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Programming Methodology Group. That's a mouthful of departments in which she works. But it appears that her career and knowledge base are fundamentally applicable to just about everything in software. Quoting the ACM site:

Liskov revolutionized the programming field with groundbreaking research that underpins virtually every modern computer application for both consumers and businesses. Her achievements in programming language design have made software more reliable and easier to maintain. They are now the basis of every important programming language since 1975, including Ada, C++, Java and C#. 

Liskov heads the Programming Methodology Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, where she has conducted research and has been a professor since 1972

Congratulations to Liskov on receiving computing's highest honor.