HONOURING A STORIED CAREER
Paul Dirksen (centre) with Burt Matthews, president of the University of Waterloo, and Professor Wes Graham. University of Waterloo Archives. Graphic Services fonds. 80-02-37.
HE WAS NEVER TOO BUSY TO SPEND TIME WITH HIS STUDENTS
SANDRA DIRKSEN
A University of Waterloo alum who played a significant role in the school’s illustrious computer history will be remembered through a student scholarship in his name.
The Paul Dirksen Memorial Graduate Scholarship in Computer Science is supported with a generous gift of $200,000 made by Sandra Dirksen to honour her late husband’s life and legacy.
Two $10,000 scholarships will be awarded each year to computer science master’s students.
“My family and I decided a scholarship would best reflect the love Paul had for his students and the loyalty he had for the University, its Math Faculty and Computer Science Department,” Sandra said.
Paul, who died in April 2023 at age 83, spent most of his career at Waterloo.
After graduating with a BSc in applied mathematics in 1963 and an MSc in computer science in 1964, Paul’s professors and mentors Ralph Stanton and Wes Graham encouraged him to teach computer science at Waterloo.
“Paul was a people-person and loved teaching,” said Sandra. “He was never too busy to spend time with his students, providing them with advice or showing them how to do something.”
Outside the classroom, he was instrumental in helping put the University on the international map in various ways.
He was one of the brilliant minds behind the development of the WATFOR and WATFIV compilers for the IBM 360 mainframe system in the late 1960s. These compilers garnered over 3,000 customers in 60 countries worldwide.
For many years, he was the director of the Department of Computer Services (DCS). DCS ran the iconic IBM 360/75 mainframe housed in the Red Room on the lower floor of the Mathematics and Computer building.
Paul co-authored several textbooks including Fortran IV with Watfor and Watfiv, which was a long-time Prentice Hall bestseller.
In the 1970s, Paul, Don Cowan and Wes Graham started the Waterloo Foundation for the Advancement of Computing (WATFAC), a charitable organization that developed educational software, hardware and related textbooks. It also provided scholarships and study grants to teachers and students who wished to study computer science.
In recognition of his contributions to computer science, Paul was awarded the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Grace Murray Hopper Award for young innovators in 1972.
Paul and Sandra met on a blind date at a dance in Sauble Beach, Ontario during the summer of 1963. They married two years later and went on to have two sons and a daughter.
Sandra hopes that her husband’s memory will stay alive through the scholarship.
“I’m sure that anyone receiving the scholarship will receive some kind of history on Paul and what he accomplished for Waterloo,” she said.
