Oral history interview with Peter J. Denning

Abstract

This interview focuses on Peter Denning’s pioneering early contributions to computer security. This includes discussion of his perspective on CTSS and Multics as a graduate student at MIT, pioneering (with his student Scott Graham) the critical computer security concept of a reference monitor for each information object as a young faculty member at Princeton University, and his continuing contributions to the computer security field in his first years as a faculty member at Purdue University. Because of an extensive, career spanning oral history done with Denning as part of the ACM Oral History series (which includes his contributions as President of ACM, research on operating systems, and principles of computer science), this interview is primarily limited to Denning’s early career when computer security was one of his fundamental research areas.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1116862, “Building an Infrastructure for Computer Security History.”