Association Internationale
pour les
Technologies Objets

The AITO Dahl-Nygaard Prize

In 2004, AITO established an annual prize in the name of the Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard to honor their pioneering work on object-orientation. See the new statutes of the prize for the award process approved on October 2021.


newAITO Dahl-Nygaard Prizes 2022: Call for Nominations, extended deadline December 15, 2021

AITO is looking for nominations for the forthcoming AITO Dahl-Nygaard Prizes 2022


The prizes are named after Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard, whose pioneering conceptual and technical work in the sixties shaped that view of programming and modeling which is now known as object-orientation.

One prize is awarded to a junior researcher (who has obtained the PhD degree at most 7 years before the award year, excluding any parental leave), and one prize to a senior researcher. The senior researcher should have made a significant long-term contribution to the field in research or engineering. The junior researcher should have made a promising contribution to the field through a paper, a thesis, or a prototype implementation.

Recipients of the Prizes

new 2021, Aarhus
Kim Bruce (senior prize), and Karim Ali (junior prize)
2020, Berlin
Jan Vitek (senior prize), and Jonathan Bell (junior prize)
2019, London
Laurie Hendren (senior prize), and Ilya Sergey (junior prize)
2018, Amsterdam
Lars Bak (senior prize), and Guoqing Harry Xu (junior prize)
2017, Barcelona
Gilad Bracha (senior prize), and Ross Tate (junior prize)
2016, Rome
James Noble (senior prize), and Emina Torlak (junior prize)
2015, Prague
Bjarne Stroustrup (senior prize), and Alexander J. Summers (junior prize)
2014, Uppsala
William Cook (senior prize), Robert France (senior prize), and Tudor Gîrba (junior prize)
2013, Montpellier
Oscar Nierstrasz (senior prize) and Matthew Parkinson (junior prize)
2012, Beijing
Gregor Kiczales (senior prize) and Tobias Wrigstad (junior prize)
2011, Lancaster
Craig Chambers (senior prize) and Atsushi Igarashi (junior prize)
2010, Maribor
Doug Lea (senior prize) and Erik Ernst (junior prize)
2009, Genoa
David Ungar (senior prize)
2008, Paphos
Akinori Yonezawa (senior prize) and Wolfgang De Meuter (junior prize)
2007, Berlin
Luca Cardelli (senior prize) and Jonathan Aldrich (junior prize)
2006, Nantes
Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and (posthumously) John Vlissides
2005, Glasgow
Bertrand Meyer (senior prize) and Gail Murphy (junior prize)