ForeverMissed
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This memorial website was created in memory of Norm Hardy.  His contributions made our lives richer and changed the trajectory of computer science.  Please help us build a picture of what he meant to the world by adding memories of him, insights he shared with you, and photos you might have. 

August 14, 2021
August 14, 2021
I met Norm and Ann Hardy when I worked at Tymshare/Tymnet from about 1971 through 1985. He help me to understand the Xerox Data Systems 940 rotating drum software that he had modified to create two copies of read-only pages to reduce access latency to those pages. He made many useful suggestions on some other projects, such as multiplying data by prime numbers 15, 17, and 19 to create a better checksum algorithm.  Once he invited me over to his office to see an early version of the Apple Lisa desktop computer and to meet Doug Engelbart, who invented the computer mouse. I had an email from Norm only a few years ago. I am very saddened to hear of his passing. He will be missed.
September 16, 2019
September 16, 2019
Sorry I am late to this post. I just saw it today. I worked with Norm at Tymshare. He will be missed I was a computer operator in the Tysmahre data centers in Cupertino and Valley Forge and became a data center manager eventually. He was a brilliant man. He helped me and he operators when he came into the data centers. He would rub his temples in thought and then his fingers would fly across the tty keyboard until he got the answers or fixes we needed. He was able to interpret IBM lingo to us Tymshare folks when I IBM was explaining VM to us.  And Norm would explain our questions to IBM when we asked them questions. He was an amazing person. He could do the techy talk when needed and then turn around and explain in plain language what was going on. He is a person I will always remember.
January 24, 2019
January 24, 2019
Although my first job was at Tymshare, and I knew Norm a bit from that, my real connection to him was through Lee Corbin, and from many great discussions, usually at Norm's house or in a book discussion group he sometimes joined at Xerox PARC. In one of those discussions Norm taught me about a discrete approximation to Riemannian geometry called Regge Calculus.  Many years earlier he had wondered what black holes would look like, and decided to find out by doing ray tracing of light around the curved space near a black hole. So he might have been using the Regge calculus for that, I don't recall. To Norm this was just interesting stuff to toss out for fun. But it turns out it helped me very much on part of my Ph.D. thesis, more than anything I learned from my advisers or professors.  Norm even sent me C code for computing geodesics on a manifold using straight line segments on a mesh approximation, and barycentric coordinates and edge lengths of the mesh simplices. The program was terse, elegant, and barely recognizable as C, in a style quite unlike anything I've seen before or since. It was as though Norm had turned C into his own better language. Vintage Norm, I like to think. At Norm's memorial, I was touched by the mention of how many people Norm mentored. I hadn't even thought of Norm as a mentor, probably because the discussions with him were so fun, and because he always treated me, undeservedly, as an equal. But as Pam suggested at the memorial, just the way Norm resonated with people provided a gift of insight, encouragement and inspiration, and was itself a kind of mentorship.
November 12, 2018
November 12, 2018
I was not able to know Norman as well as many of you. I was introduced to Norman sometime in the 1980s by George Michael where they worked. Among other things, I moderated an ad hoc joint discussion on computer security which had Norman as a sometime member with a number of others of you from CRG and TIS.
It's also not like I followed everything Norman and the rest of the capability OS world went, but I did brief visit Key Labs. And who knows what Norman did with the Fort.
Norman was a soft voice in the security community and also had other ideas about software. It's no question that he will be missed.
November 11, 2018
November 11, 2018
I have much to say about Norm than I can say here. He indirectly gave me my first job at Tymshare when I was a high school student. He demonstrated personally that one could be fascinated by computers and yet personable. And he was always, always willing to answer my questions about the 940 monitor or any other computing mystery. He was very important to my teenage life (and beyond).
November 11, 2018
November 11, 2018
When I lived with friend Norm for awhile, I declared to him that a sixteenth century Italian Mass by Tomás Luis de Victoria that he liked was an unhip museum artifact. He said 'wrong'. Norm was almost invariably right.
November 8, 2018
November 8, 2018
I was fortunate enough to spend a summer working for Norm and Ann, at Key Logic about 30 years ago. Despite my departure from the Bay Area after that summer, Norm was always willing to share ideas and we conversed off and on ever since.
Software development being what it is, every now and then during that summer the KeyKOS kernel team would make a mistake -- yet once the system came back up, the rest of us would find we had not lost any more than a few minutes worth of work. At the time I failed to appreciate the foresight which went into the architecture, but whenever I've lost significant work due to a crash in the intervening decades, I recollect my luck to have experienced one of Norm's systems.
While that resilience was an advantage, it was not the most significant part of the ideas behind Key Logic, however. Reading current news about information security (or more accurately our lack of it?) I cannot fail to be reminded of how KeyKOS confinement did double duty: not only were applications protected from malicious users, but user data was equally protected from disclosure by applications.
Thank you, Norm, for not only showing me that an OS could do better, but also how.
November 5, 2018
November 5, 2018
After Norm's keynote at OCap 17 in Vancouver, BC. Norm left the door open for a continuing discussion about Object-capabilities with 'students' like me. Succinctly answering my questions, teaching me with patience, helping me think and understand key concepts written on cap-lore.
November 5, 2018
November 5, 2018
We did not know Norm well because we only visited California from Canada for brief periods. Jennifer(Norms daughter) and our son are married. We aren’t well versed in his career, although we know Norm was an exceptional man. I enjoyed watching him with our grandson as he was always patient and kind; but he also made him think. I appreciated how Norm accepted and loved my son, Matthew. I know Matthew loved him as a father. A community of learners will miss Norm. We send our love and prayers to his family. Paul and Deborah McIsaac
November 5, 2018
November 5, 2018
I only met Norm for brief periods of time when I visited California-from Canada . His daughter, Jennifer, married my son. I am saddened to hear of his passing. I know his family loved him dearly. I cherished watching his interactions with our grandson,Quinn, he as so patient and kind. I also appreciate his loving acceptance of my son,Matthew. Even though I know little about his career I know he was a brilliant and gentle man.
November 3, 2018
November 3, 2018
​Norm Hardy is the source of all modern thinking about capabilities. Norm was the chief architect of the KeyKOS operating system, originally Gnosis (Great New Operating System In the Sky). Back during the first golden age of capabilities, in the 1960s and 1970s, Gnosis/KeyKOS was one of a number of capability operating systems. However, by the 1990s only the ideas rooted in KeyKOS continued to grow. All the other branches had fossilized or withered. To a good approximation, everyone today who is excited about capabilities learned it from Norm, or someone who learned it from Norm, etc.


Due to his central role, I invited Norm to give the keynote at OCap 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEDCXTpx0R8&list=PLCq8mSCP664TUdgHl1cD5sDiAmrDoio2p


The KeyKOS operating system is not just an astonishing engineering achievement, it is an astonishing intellectual achievement. As an intellectual achievement, KeyKOS embodies a philosophy of computation that I have spent much of my life trying to understand and explain to the world. I will say more on this elsewhere.


As an engineering achievement, as I say in my introductory remarks to Norm's keynote, KeyKOS is bizarrely close to perfect. For years, my every attempt to find something to improve failed. Jonathan Shapiro had a similar experience but did arrive at genuine improvements with EROS and Coyotos, which provided the crucial bridge to seL4. Today's only practical verified secure OS, seL4, could be verified to solve the whole problem because it built on the KeyKOS design which actually did solve the whole problem.


Several of us have brought some of these insights into other areas of engineering (with apologies to all those I should have included):
  * Dean Tribble, Norm, Chip Morningstar, Marc Stiegler, and I brought these insights into modern programming language design (Trusty Scheme, Joule, E, Midori, Dr.SES).
  * Bill Frantz, Chip Morningstar, Tyler Close, and I brought these to cryptographic protocols (CapTP, Waterken, SPKI/SDSI). We also built on crucial foundational work by Jed Donnelley that Norm told us about.
  * Marc Stiegler, Ka-Ping Yee, Alan Karp, and Mark Lentczner brought capability-based insights to user interface security (CapDesk, Belay), all starting from a user interface koan from Norm: "The clipboard is inherently hostile to user interface security. Drag-n-drop is inherently friendly to it."
November 3, 2018
November 3, 2018
I had known *of* Norm Hardy since 1985 when I first came across KeyKOS, and kept track of his work over the years, but it was only this year I met him. Over a few meetings at the Lobster Shack he helped me clear my thinking on some ocap ideas I have been playing with in relation to the Mill processor. He was understated, kind, patient, willing to take time to explain as well as listen, and yet no nonsense. This seems to be a common trait of many of the best thinkers/engineers/scientists.
My deepest condolences to Norm's family.
November 3, 2018
November 3, 2018
Norm influenced my thinking on computer security more than any other individual.
I first met Norm at a Cypherpunks talk that he gave about KeyKOS at the Stanford University Quad. Hugh Daniel, who also since passed, had invited Norm to present the talk because Hugh felt that the Cypherpunks needed to hear about capabilities. I recall that Metricom modems were all the rage back then and a handful of attendees had them Velcro taped to their laptops.
Minutes into Norm's talk I realized that most of what I believed in the realm of computer security, indeed had implemented myself, was wrong: designs that do not employ capabilities are fundamentally *insecurable*. Sandboxes are a dead-end design choice. Norm's talk has shaped my thinking ever since.
Ad Astra, Norm!
November 3, 2018
November 3, 2018
For everything that is remarkable about Norm - his warmth, his kindness, his wisdom and knowledge - what has consistently surprised me about my conversations with Norm is his approachability. He shares and discusses ideas without ego, over-righteousness or dogmatism, but with clarity and simplicity. He never had a need to prove anything to others, but rather gently pointed them toward the right conclusion.
We're very sorry to hear of his passing, and thank the Hardy family for all the love you've shown him, and for lending him regularly to the capability theory community as a treasured father.
November 2, 2018
November 2, 2018
My deepest condolences! I was honored to know Norm when I was a child, when he worked at the Lab in Livermore, and later. He was a wonderful, quirky, brilliant man. When I close my eyes I can hear his voice even all these years later.
November 2, 2018
November 2, 2018
I only got to know Norm during the last 3-4 years when we discussed ideas for the mill computing cpu, he always had really interesting insights.
My condolences to his family, I know that you will miss him a lot but also celebrate his great achievements.
November 2, 2018
November 2, 2018
I met Norman at Lawrence Livermore lab in 1957. His impact on computing at the lab was enormous and and has been documented. He left the lab in the 1960s after transforming forever the way we use computers. I am so happy I was always able subsequently to keep him in sight, always learning from him, up to the very last. He recorded many of his insightful technical and philosophical ideas in his website. I would urge his contemporary friends to see if his musings can be edited and distributed in some form. He still has much to teach us all.
November 2, 2018
November 2, 2018
About two years ago I got an email from Norm, who encouraged me to continue my research on capabilities. Before the email, we never met, and only later I know that Norm has done great work on capabilities decades ago. At the time, I was just a beginning PhD student without much experience. I was so humble and grateful to receive the encouragement from Norm. Thank you very much, Norm, I'll never forget your encouraging words.
A PhD student at EPFL, Switzerland
November 2, 2018
November 2, 2018
I was privileged to attend "friam" object-capability discussions with Norm, and was amazed that someone with so much intelligence and wit could also be so kind. I am the beneficiary of his immense insights regarding computer science. He will not be forgotten.
November 2, 2018
November 2, 2018
Here is Norm in his role as sage, historian, inventor, advisor, mentor, and colleague at the weekly Mill Computing meetings. I will always also fondly remember the many one-on-one lunches I was privileged to share with Norm at Old Port Lobster Shack in Portola Valley. What a privilege it was to know this wonderful man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J4JivgMEKs#t=24
November 1, 2018
November 1, 2018
A few things I learned from my father:
1) If you discover you're completely wrong about something you thought you understood, celebrate. You might just be onto something big.
2) Question most closely the things you want to believe. Don't fear the outcome of this process: as a rule, the truth ultimately proves more satisfying than the misconception.
3) The reality that humans can create for each other is greater than any fantasy yet conceived.
November 1, 2018
November 1, 2018
It is with heavy heart that I receive the news of Norm's passing. What a fantastic contribution he made to Tymshare's success, playing crucial roles through the years, sharing his immense knowledge with colleagues. I trust that family and friends will all have good memories of Norm that help sustain during this time of great loss.
November 1, 2018
November 1, 2018
I knew Norm for many years and learned a lot from him, both directly and through other friends of mine that he has influenced. What can I say? Aside from being delightful as a person, Norm has made substantial contributions to humanity that are still growing in their effect.
November 1, 2018
November 1, 2018
Norm was my introduction to the idea that truly great thinkers are kind, open to others and generous with their time. He set a great example to aspire to.
October 31, 2018
October 31, 2018
I have known a lot of smart people over the years, but Norm stands out. The breadth of his interests and the persistence with which he pursued them never failed to amaze me. In each case, he brought his unique insights, approaching the problem with new eyes, finding connections others would have missed.
I particularly appreciated Norm's patience. It sometimes took me a while to translate what he was saying into terms familiar to me. He never showed any sign of frustration; he just led me through the process until I finally figured out that he was right and why he was right.
Norm was a regular at our Friday morning meetings; they will be poorer for his absence.
October 31, 2018
October 31, 2018
Forever a part of me -
Norm Hardy was my Dad. Our house was full of puzzles, Escher, Bach, big stacks of computer print-outs, insightful conversation, apple pie and love. I think differently because of him. I love being around people who can actually provide a different perspective on an issue ... not just an opinion, but an insight. 
He influenced the world of computer science profoundly, but I'll have to leave it to others to really describe that history.
My work now is in mending the American West back together through civil conversation about natural resource use - trees, rivers, wildlife. I talk with cowboys, Forest Service, timber mill operators, river guides, tribal members etc.  To a huge extent, I can do this because I cherish the new perspective. Rather than being resistant to new perspectives, I love them. Norm taught me to listen for a better idea, to absorb it, to play with it, to open it up every angle with gentle questions. He was endlessly patient with my struggles to keep up with him. And I learned how to ask questions to create better understanding.
Although in a totally different realm, his scientific sprit of inquiry will live on in me. His endless patience and his gentle, but unyielding demand for an actual explanation continue to inspire.
I am humbly honored to carry that with me. He was a profound man, and a huge support. I am so fortunate to carry of piece of him in my life, forever.

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Recent Tributes
August 14, 2021
August 14, 2021
I met Norm and Ann Hardy when I worked at Tymshare/Tymnet from about 1971 through 1985. He help me to understand the Xerox Data Systems 940 rotating drum software that he had modified to create two copies of read-only pages to reduce access latency to those pages. He made many useful suggestions on some other projects, such as multiplying data by prime numbers 15, 17, and 19 to create a better checksum algorithm.  Once he invited me over to his office to see an early version of the Apple Lisa desktop computer and to meet Doug Engelbart, who invented the computer mouse. I had an email from Norm only a few years ago. I am very saddened to hear of his passing. He will be missed.
September 16, 2019
September 16, 2019
Sorry I am late to this post. I just saw it today. I worked with Norm at Tymshare. He will be missed I was a computer operator in the Tysmahre data centers in Cupertino and Valley Forge and became a data center manager eventually. He was a brilliant man. He helped me and he operators when he came into the data centers. He would rub his temples in thought and then his fingers would fly across the tty keyboard until he got the answers or fixes we needed. He was able to interpret IBM lingo to us Tymshare folks when I IBM was explaining VM to us.  And Norm would explain our questions to IBM when we asked them questions. He was an amazing person. He could do the techy talk when needed and then turn around and explain in plain language what was going on. He is a person I will always remember.
January 24, 2019
January 24, 2019
Although my first job was at Tymshare, and I knew Norm a bit from that, my real connection to him was through Lee Corbin, and from many great discussions, usually at Norm's house or in a book discussion group he sometimes joined at Xerox PARC. In one of those discussions Norm taught me about a discrete approximation to Riemannian geometry called Regge Calculus.  Many years earlier he had wondered what black holes would look like, and decided to find out by doing ray tracing of light around the curved space near a black hole. So he might have been using the Regge calculus for that, I don't recall. To Norm this was just interesting stuff to toss out for fun. But it turns out it helped me very much on part of my Ph.D. thesis, more than anything I learned from my advisers or professors.  Norm even sent me C code for computing geodesics on a manifold using straight line segments on a mesh approximation, and barycentric coordinates and edge lengths of the mesh simplices. The program was terse, elegant, and barely recognizable as C, in a style quite unlike anything I've seen before or since. It was as though Norm had turned C into his own better language. Vintage Norm, I like to think. At Norm's memorial, I was touched by the mention of how many people Norm mentored. I hadn't even thought of Norm as a mentor, probably because the discussions with him were so fun, and because he always treated me, undeservedly, as an equal. But as Pam suggested at the memorial, just the way Norm resonated with people provided a gift of insight, encouragement and inspiration, and was itself a kind of mentorship.
His Life
January 18, 2019

February 8, 1933 – October 30, 2018

Resident of Portola Valley

Norman Hardy, was born in Pomona, California in 1933, but was more truly a native of the Silicon Valley computer lab, even before Silicon Valley was a place.

He first heard about computers in 1947 when he read an article about one being installed at UCLA. The article had just enough information about what a computer was that he was able to hand-write a program.  He got on a bus the next day to go see about how to run it.  His enthusiasm never waned.

Since computer science was not yet a discipline, he studied math and physics at UC Berkeley. He graduated in 1955 with a BS in Math and went immediately to work at Lawrence Radiation Labs in Livermore, which later became known as Lawrence Livermore National Labs.  Whether it was inventing a new way to solve two-dimensional fluid equations, inventing a breakthrough computer plotting method, establishing a file & time-sharing system among the lab’s computers, or teaching a 1950’s era computer to play one of Bach’s violin sonatas, he became an indispensable and endlessly creative member of the lab’s Theoretical Division.

While traveling on Lab business to New York to help IBM build the 7030, (also known as the Stretch) he met his future wife Ann.  A brilliant programmer in her own right, and already a manager of one of IBM’s programming divisions, he immediately appreciated her skill and uninhibited intelligence.

Norm held more than one computer software patent, but his most significant contribution was his invention of the KeyKOS Operating System (originally called the Great New Operating System in the Sky GNOSIS) while at Tymshare in Cupertino.  A capabilities-based operating system, it provided a substantially more secure computing environment than existing systems. 

Norm and Ann divorced in 1978, but remained good friends.  In 1985 Norm and Ann left Tymshare with several co-workers to start Key Logic in hopes of better marketing the KeyKOS operating system.  In 1994 Ann started Agorics with a group from Xanadu, Norm and others. Throughout his life he enjoyed consulting with a wide variety of Silicon Valley start-ups on complex computer security issues.

Norm is most dearly remembered as a mentor, friend and father.  Known widely for his remarkable achievements, he was known in closer circles as someone who always had the time to talk through a complicated problem. He would give as much attention and respect to a co-worker addressing a complex encryption conundrum as he would give his teenage daughters in trying to work through their algebra homework. He was always patient and kind, and in most cases the conversation would conclude with the other person gently comprehending how Norm had been right all along.  He mentored and encouraged dozens of young programmers.  He was endlessly curious, and gave the highest praise to those who could present him with a perspective that he hadn’t considered before. His website www.cap-lore.comrecords many of his favorite ideas.  His oral history at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View records a more detailed account of early computing.

A true scientist, he sought to know how the world actually worked.  He saw beauty in complex math, physics, Escher and Bach.  In his small hermitage in Portola Valley he had a pipe organ – with over 100 actual pipes! – on which he played his favorite classical music.  Evenings brought one of his favorite activities: friends over for apple pie and conversation.  In the summers the sliding glass door would stand wide open, letting in the smell of the bay trees, the sound of crickets, and the music of the little creek out back. 

He was born to Alfa and Clyde Hardy, and grew up with an older sister, Martha (1926-1999).  He is survived by his dear friend and ex-wife Ann Hardy, and their two daughters Pamela and Jennifer, and his grandson, Quinn Mazurek.  He was curious and engaged with the world until the day he died on October 30, 2018. He was surrounded by family and friends.

Recent stories

Solar system out of kilter

August 11, 2020
I grew up with Norm and Ann as frequent visitors to our home. Our house had a very high vaulted ceiling in the living room, and hanging from one of the upper beams was a mobile of the solar system. Norm reached up and gave the sun a spin. Which of course unbalanced the whole mobile. My mother was annoyed at him for quite a while.

You write like Norman Hardy

August 10, 2020
I heard this story first from George Michael, who worked with Norm at Livermore.

Robert Cralle had written a program called "Scrawltran" that used a light pen to hand-write arithmetic expressions that were then turned into Fortran source code. Bob knew that Norm wrote 2s and Bs differently than most other people did. When writing a B, Norm started at the bottom-left with a vertical stroke and then came down to make the two curved parts on the right. This saved lifting his pen or pencil, so it was just a bit faster than the usual downward vertical stroke followed by a lift and move to the top again to begin the two curved parts. For the 2, he started at the bottom-right and traced the digit from there. I have no idea why he did that (it was no faster), but it apparently is what he did.

At some point, Ivan Sutherland (of computer graphics fame) was visiting Livermore. Norm gave him a tour with one of the stops being the IBM 7090 and a graphics display, which is what ran Bob Cralle's Scrawltran program. Bob knew this was coming. He modified his code to recognize Norm's characteristic strokes for 2s and Bs. When the day of the visit came, Norm sat down to demonstrate to Ivan how Scrawltran worked. As Bob had expected (because everyone seemed to do it), Norm entered a 2 and a B (not sure what order). When he entered the first character, a message from the system appeared saying "You write like Norman Hardy." Norm was nonplussed, but continued the demo and wrote the second character. The system responded "By God, you ARE Norman Hardy!"

At that point Norm got up and walked all around the computer looking for the hidden wire that he thought must have been there because how else could the program have generated those messages. I was not told what Ivan Sutherland thought of all this, but a lot of folks at LIvermore shared the story again and again.
November 6, 2018

I met Norm at weekly Mill CPU meetings. My honest observation is that he has somehow gotten younger over the five years that I've known him. I'm honored that Norm, Ivan, and I enjoyed morning coffee during those meetings.

One memorable time for me is Norm's meeting with me at Peet's in Menlo Park before my DConf 2016 presentation. He filled me with stories, knowledge, and confidence.

He was the speaker at our local C++ meetup on February 10, 2016, presenting "Reliability and security of today’s software platforms". His voice and slides are captured on a video linked there: https://www.meetup.com/ACCU-Bay-Area/events/227325917/

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