Skip to content
Trackfame
Join
Edmund M. Clarke
Science Technology

Edmund M. Clarke

Co-inventor of model checking, used to verify chips and software

27 July 1945 – 22 December 2020 United States Verified by our editors
Follow 0 followers Correction Cite
Lived
75 yrs
1945 – 2020
Works listed
2
Paper, Book
Honours
3
Most recent 2014
Profile views
2
0 followers

Edmund Clarke was an American computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who, with Allen Emerson, invented model checking — an automatic way to check that hardware and software designs behave correctly. He shared the 2007 Turing Award with Emerson and Joseph Sifakis.

Biography

Education

Clarke studied mathematics at the University of Virginia and Duke, and earned his PhD in computer science at Cornell in 1976.

Model checking

At Harvard in 1981, Clarke and his student Allen Emerson proposed checking automatically whether a finite-state model of a system satisfies properties written in temporal logic. Unlike testing, model checking explores every possible state and can produce a counter-example when something is wrong.

Fighting state explosion

At Carnegie Mellon from 1982, Clarke’s group developed symbolic model checking and other methods that let the technique handle systems with enormous numbers of states. Companies such as Intel adopted it to verify chip designs.

Honours

He received the Turing Award in 2007. He died in December 2020 of complications of COVID-19.

Timeline

  1. 1945

    Born in Newport News, Virginia, United States

  2. 1976

    PhD from Cornell

  3. 1981

    Model checking paper with Emerson

  4. 1982

    Joins Carnegie Mellon

  5. 1992

    Symbolic model checking

  6. 2007

    Turing Award

  7. 2014

    Franklin Medal

  8. 2020

    Dies in December

  9. 2020

    Died, aged 75

Notable works

  • 1981

    Design and Synthesis of Synchronization Skeletons Using Branching-Time Temporal Logic Paper

    With E. Allen Emerson.

  • 1999

    Model Checking Book

    With Orna Grumberg and Doron Peled.

Awards and honours

  • Paris Kanellakis Award

    1998

  • Turing Award

    2007

  • Benjamin Franklin Medal

    2014

Did you know?

  1. 1

    Model checking found bugs in standards such as cache-coherence protocols.

  2. 2

    His 2007 Turing Award was shared by three people.

  3. 3

    He co-wrote the standard textbook on model checking.

Connections

Related people

Also born on 27 July

Frequently asked

Who is Edmund M. Clarke?

Edmund Clarke was an American computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who, with Allen Emerson, invented model checking — an automatic way to check that hardware and software designs behave correctly. He shared the 2007 Turing Award with Emerson and Joseph Sifakis.

When did Edmund M. Clarke die?

Edmund M. Clarke died on 22 December 2020 at the age of 75.

Where is Edmund M. Clarke from?

Edmund M. Clarke was born in Newport News, Virginia, United States.

What is Edmund M. Clarke known for?

Edmund M. Clarke is best known for Model checking; hardware verification; Turing Award 2007.

What awards has Edmund M. Clarke received?

Notable honours include Paris Kanellakis Award (1998), Turing Award (2007), Benjamin Franklin Medal (2014).

References

  1. Edmund M. Clarke — Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  2. Edmund M. Clarke — Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  3. Official website. www.cs.cmu.edu. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
  4. Edmund M. Clarke (Q92819) — structured data. Wikidata. Retrieved 4 November 2026.

Includes material from the Wikipedia article “Edmund M. Clarke”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. That text is available under the same licence. Learn more

External links

Official website Website Wikipedia
Filed under Carnegie Mellon UniversityModel checkingTuring Award Computer ScientistProfessor

About this profile

Cite this page

“Edmund M. Clarke.” TrackFame, last updated 5 November 2026. https://trackfame.com/person/edmund-clarke

Discussion 0

Sign in or create an account to join the discussion.

No comments yet — be the first.

More in Science

See all
Margaret Hamilton Science

Margaret Hamilton

MIT engineer who led the software for the Apollo Moon landings and coined “software engineering”

1936 – 2026

Marvin Minsky Science

Marvin Minsky

Co-founder of MIT’s artificial intelligence laboratory and a founding father of AI

1927 – 2016

Michael Faraday Science

Michael Faraday

Self-taught scientist who discovered electromagnetic induction

1791 – 1867

Yann LeCun Science

Yann LeCun

French-American AI pioneer who invented convolutional neural networks

Born 1959

Nikola Tesla Science

Nikola Tesla

Serbian-American inventor of the alternating-current induction motor

1856 – 1943

M. Visvesvaraya Science

M. Visvesvaraya

Engineer and statesman, whose birthday is India’s Engineers’ Day

1860 – 1962