David Gelernter

Professional Trajectory

David Hillel Gelernter is an American computer scientist, artist, and writer. He is a professor of computer science at Yale University. Gelernter is known for contributions to parallel computation in the 1980s, and for books on topics such as computed worlds. In 1993 Gelernter was sent a mail bomb by Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. He opened it and the resulting explosion almost killed him, leaving him with permanent loss of use of his right hand as it destroyed four fingers, and permanent damage to his right eye.