Bertrand Meyer

Bertrand Meyer developed the Eiffel programming language, and is an author, academic and consultant in the field of computer languages.

He is the initial designer of the Eiffel method and language and has continued to participate in its evolution, and is the originator of the development method known as Design by Contract.

His books include Object-Oriented Software Construction, (a general presentation of object technology), Eiffel: The Language, (description of the Eiffel language), Object Success (a discussion of object technology for managers), Reusable Software (a discussion of reuse issues and solutions), and Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages. He has authored numerous articles and edited conference proceedings. Other activities include adjunct professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia (1998-2003) and membership of the French Academy of Technologies.

He is also active as a consultant (object-oriented system design, architectural reviews, technology assessment), trainer in object technology and other software topics, and conference speaker.

Meyer received the equivalent of a bachelor's degree in engineering from the École polytechnique in Paris, a master's degree from Stanford University, and a Ph.D from the Université de Nancy in Nancy, France. He had a 9-year technical and managerial career in a large company, and was for three years on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His experience with object technology through the Simula language, as well as early work on abstract data types and formal specification provided some of the background for the development of Eiffel. Eiffel and Simula have been influential in the development of other languages, such as Python.

He pursues the ideal of computer languages being simple, elegant and user-friendly.

Since October, 2001, he has been Professor of Software Engineering at ETH, the Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute, in Zürich, where he pursues research on a central software engineering issue: how to build trusted components -- reusable software elements whose quality can be guaranteed.