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In this paper we will also present some of the other dimensions of Nygaard, his po-
litical work, his social engagement and cooperation with the trade unions, and his
international entrepreneurship. And we will try to show that he continually worked to
establish object-orientation not only as a programming tool, but as a way of organiz-
ing and communicating about system descriptions from different perspectives and as a
fundamental tool in the system development process.
2 Early Years
According to his eldest son Marius [23], Nygaard showed exceptional and diverse
talents from an early age. Initially his main interests were in the natural sciences and
in mathematics. While he was in secondary school (age 14-15), this brought him into
discussions of botany and astronomy with university professors. He followed univer-
sity-level lectures and won a national mathematics award before finishing grammar
school (age 16-19) [15].
His insistence on knowing everything about the topics that caught his interest was
well-known among his friends and colleagues. During his years as a student, his broad
music interest paid off by giving him extra financing from writing reviews of re-
cordings of classical music in a leading Norwegian newspaper. In his later years, he
took a deep interest in photography and developed expert knowledge about good wine.
Nygaard's many talents and interests were aided by an immense memory capacity 1 .
3 Early Professional Years
Nygaard's studies at the University of Oslo led to bachelor degrees in astronomy and
physics and to a master in mathematics in 1956 based on his thesis “Theoretical As-
pects of Monte Carlo Methods”. The thesis theme resulted from his work at The Nor-
wegian Defence Research Establishment (NDRE) where he had been working full
time since he started his military service in 1948. His first six years at NDRE were
spent in the Mathematics Section, initially doing Numerical Analysis and Computer
Programming. 2 It was here that he first met Ole Johan Dahl.
In 1952 he was asked to join the Operations Research (OR) Group at NDRE, soon
he became the head of the group. One typical military OR project at the time was the
study of the combat capacity of infantry soldiers. How much could they carry for how
long on an outdoor march over several days in rough terrain, how many calories were
necessary, and what should they eat and drink, to be able to meet an enemy after sev-
eral days of strain? One factor is often left out of such experiments, the willingness of
the guinea pig recruits to take the experiment seriously and play the situation cor-
rectly. Nygaard and his group chose to join the experiment, do the march, eat the
1 As an example, during a breakdown after a particularly hardworking period in 1962-63,
which surpassed even his extreme working capacity, he was ordered by his doctor to rest and
do something completely different for a while. Nygaard did rest, by reading the 22 volume
world history by Swedish historian Carl Grimberg. Thirty years later he could without prob-
lems recall world history in impressive detail, and use it creatively in his political strategies.
2 The section was headed by Jan V. Garwick (1916-89), the inspiring father of Norwegian
computer science and Norway's first member of the IFIP Council [2].
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