Portrait of John Hopcroft

Birthday profile

John Hopcroft

John Hopcroft, American computer scientist and author

Born
October 7, 1939
Age in 2026
87
Zodiac sign
Libra
Birth year
1939

About John Hopcroft

John Edward Hopcroft is an American theoretical computer scientist. His textbooks on theory of computation and data structures are regarded as standards in their fields. He is a professor emeritus at Cornell University, co-director of the Center on Frontiers of Computing Studies at Peking University, the director of the John Hopcroft Center for Computer Science at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Hopcroft Center on Computer Science at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He and Robert Tarjan won the 1986 ACM Turing Award. In 2005, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

John Hopcroft timeline

  1. He and Robert Tarjan won the 1986 ACM Turing Award.
  2. In 2005, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia.

The world when John Hopcroft was born

John Hopcroft was born in 1939. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1939

  • #1 song"Over the Rainbow" – Judy Garland
  • Top movieGone with the Wind
  • Best-selling bookThe Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentLou Gehrig delivers his "Luckiest Man" farewell speech
  • Top headlineGermany invades Poland — World War II begins
  • Technology milestoneFirst regular television broadcasts in the US (NBC)
  • Defining fadThe Wizard of Oz mania
  • Notable inventionNylon stockings
  • World population2.30 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
  • U.S. population130.9M

1939 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in John Hopcroft's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19392026
Gas$0.19$3.45/gal
Average home$5,200$435,000
Average income$2,900$67,500
Minimum wage$0.30$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population130.9M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.