Under this heading the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung reported on the conferment of a Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize to the computer scientists Manfred Broy and Ernst-Rüdiger Olderog. The newspaper wrote: "In the Augsburg Hans Holbein High School, Manfred Broy was noticed for his mathematical talent, his lively manner, and his long hair.
This has changed only with respect to the latter. Broy, who finished his studies at the TUM and earned his Dr. rer. nat. degree in 1980 and the Dr. rer. nat. habil. degree in 1982, was in 1983 one of the first computer science professors at the University of Passau, where he became also the first dean of the computer science faculty. In 1989, he came back to the Munich faculty.
His work is concentrated around the description of the properties of software systems, with particular emphasis on the specification of complex processes on distributed computers.

The prize, amounting to three million Deutschmarks, is, according to the donor, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, "intended to improve the working conditions of outstanding scientists, to extend their research capacity, to remove from them the burden of administrative efforts and to enable them to employ particularly gifted younger scientists."

Broy was one of the first to give a satisfactory semantics for loosely cooperating processes. This work can be continued now under massive employment of algebraic methods, with the practical aim of shortening programming and testing periods in computing networks which are not necessarily strongly coupled. This is of particular importance for the control of large industrial plants with a view to economy and safety.

Olderog, too, has a Munich connection: his academic teacher was Hans Langmaack in Kiel, who in turn was a student of Klaus Samelson (+1980) and of F.L.Bauer during their time in Mainz and later on.

Friedrich L. Bauer