Ian McPhee
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Introduction
Ian McPhee is the chair of the board of directors of Waterloo's Accelerator Centre and one of the co-founders of Watcom International Corporation. Watcom produced a variety of tools, including the well-known Watcom C compiler. Ian is also the vice-chair of the University of Waterloo's board of governors and Campaign Waterloo’s honorary chair for the Faculty of Mathematics.
History
While earning his master’s degree (MMath ’79), Ian worked with the late Professor Wes Graham, Waterloo’s “father of computing,” in UW’s Computer Systems Group. In 1974, a new version of WATFOR (Waterloo Fortran Compiler) was introduced, known as Structured WATFIV, or WATFIV-S. The program was developed to allow FORTRAN programmers to design and write programs in a structured manner. WATFIV-S was written primarily by Ian and contained command statements aimed at encouraging better programming.
Watcom International Corporation was founded in 1981 by Ian McPhee, Fred Crigger and Jack Schueler, former members of UW's Computer Systems Group. The company's products, including Waterloo BASIC programming language, Watcom C/C++ and Fortran compilers are considered milestones in software development. Ian became President of WatCom in 1986. Watcom was eventually acquired by Powersoft in 1994, which subsequently merged with Sybase in 1995. In May 2000, Sybase spun off their mobile and embedded computing division into a new company, iAnywhere Solutions.
In 1995 McPhee was awarded the first J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation, presented annually by the René Descartes Foundation to the UW math grad who best exemplifies Wes Graham’s qualities as a leader and innovator. He retired in 1997 as vice-president and general manager of Sybase Waterloo. To keep the Watcom name alive and to encourage outstanding students, he established the Watcom Scholarships in Computer Science at UW. [edit] Philanthropy
- In 2001, he helped to create the J.W. Graham Information Technology Trust. The trust has raised over $5 million so far and has endowed a fund that supports innovative IT projects and education at the University of Waterloo.
Awards and accolades
- 1995 - Inaugural recipient of the J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation
References
- Chronology of Computing at UW - http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/40th/Chronology/1974.shtml
