| David Harel | |
| Birth Date: | 1950 4, df=yes |
| Birth Place: | London, England, UK |
| Nationality: | Israeli and British |
| Field: | Computer Science |
| Work Institution: | Weizmann Institute |
| Thesis Title: | Logics of Programs: Axiomatics and Descriptive Power |
| Thesis Year: | 1978 |
| Thesis Url: | https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/149488 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Vaughan Pratt |
| Doctoral Students: | David Peleg |
| Prizes: | |
David Harel (Hebrew: דוד הראל; born 12 April 1950) is a computer scientist, currently serving as President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He has been on the faculty of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel since 1980, and holds the William Sussman Professorial Chair of Mathematics. Born in London, England, he was Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the institute for seven years.
Harel is best known for his work on dynamic logic, computability, database theory, software engineering and modelling biological systems. In the 1980s he invented the graphical language of Statecharts for specifying and programming reactive systems, which has been adopted as part of the UML standard. Since the late 1990s he has concentrated on a scenario-based approach to programming such systems, launched by his co-invention (with W. Damm) of Live Sequence Charts. He has published expository accounts of computer science, such as his award-winning 1987 book "Algorithmics: The Spirit of Computing" and his 2000 book "Computers Ltd.: What They Really Can’t do", and has presented series on computer science for Israeli radio and television. He has also worked on other diverse topics, such as graph layout, computer science education, biological modeling and the analysis and communication of odors.
Harel completed his PhD at MIT between 1976 and 1978. In 1987, he co-founded the software company I-Logix, which in 2006 became part of IBM. He has advocated building a full computer model of the Caenorhabditis elegans nematode, which was the first multicellular organism to have its genome completely sequenced. The eventual completeness of such a model depends on his updated version of the Turing test. He is a fellow of the ACM, the IEEE, the AAAS, and the EATCS, and a member of several international academies. Harel is active in a number of peace and human rights organizations in Israel.