Garbage Collection

Modern software places increasing reliance on dynamic memory allocation, but its direct management is not only notoriously error-prone. Garbage collection eliminates many of these bugs. This reference presents each of the most important algorithms in detail, often with illustrations of its characteristic features and animations of its use.

Richard is Professor of Computer Systems in the School of Computing at the University of Kent, Canterbury. He received a B.A. in Mathematics from Oxford University in 1976. He spent a few years teaching at school and college before returning to higher education at the University of Kent, where he has remained ever since, receiving an M.Sc. in Computer Science in 1989. In 1998 Richard co-founded the ACM/SIGPLAN International Symposium on Memory Management, of which he was the inaugural Programme Chair. He has published numerous papers on garbage collection, heap visualisation and electronic publishing, and he regularly sits on the programme committees of leading international conferences. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Software Practice and Experience (Wiley). He was made an Honorary Fellow of the University of Glasgow in 2005 in recognition of his research and scholarship in dynamic memory management, and a Distinguished Scientist of the ACM in 2006.
Richard is the prime author of Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management, Wiley, 1996. Garbage Collection is the process of automatically recycling unused memory. It is an essential component of all modern programming languages. Since its publication, the book has received huge acclaim:

• "The sort of comprehensive engineering manual that is so rare in computing", Gregory V. Wilson, Dr. Dobb's Journal, September, 1997.
• "I like the book because of its high standards of scholarship. I put it alongside Knuth's series", Mario Wolzko, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Microsystems Laboratories.

Richard is married, with three children. In his spare time, he races Dart 18 catamarans.