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Comment by redthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Is it usual practice for a Turing Award to be awarded so long after the work in question?

Yes. See past recipients at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award . Almost all of them are for fundamental work that everyone builds on, and seeing that relies on the benefit of years or decades of hindsight.

It seems the trend has been towards later and later recognition, which makes sense given the age of the field and the award.

- Knuth got his for TAOCP in 1976, 8 years after first publication.

- Thompson and Ritchie got theirs for UNIX in 1983, 10 or so years after its introduction.

- Englebart got his for his HCI work in 1997, 30 or so years after the fundamental work was done (but just after its universal adoption)

- Alan Kay got his for OOP & Smalltalk in 2003, 20+ years after the first stable release.

- Cert & Kahn got theirs for TCP/IP in 2005, 20+ years on.

And so forth.

I think that's probable a good way to do it. Some things that gain great traction at one time may later turn out to have been just a sparkle, or a fad. Standing the test of time is a good litmus test for the importance of scientific achievements.

Nobel Prizes, at least in the science fields, follow the same pattern. I suspect that at least in part the Nobel committee wants to avoid awarding for something unproven such as cold fusion.

The committees in the humanities seem much less concerned about this, and are able to award much sooner.

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