Martin Odersky

Martin Odersky is a prominent professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, renowned for his extensive work in programming languages. He completed his PhD under the guidance of Niklaus Wirth, the creator of Pascal, and has since focused on integrating object-oriented and functional programming paradigms. Odersky's significant contributions include the development of the Scala programming language, which elegantly combines these two paradigms while ensuring interoperability with Java and .NET systems. His earlier work also involved co-designing Java generics and creating the javac compiler, which remains the reference compiler for Java today. As head of the programming group at EPFL and chairman of Typesafe, he continues to influence the landscape of programming languages through both academic and practical application