In 1990, he returned to the University of Virginia, whose computer science program had become a separate department in 1984 and was chaired by Dr. Jones. She survives him, along with their two daughters, Ellen Wulf Epstein and Karin Wulf, and four grandsons.
Over the years, he was honored by every major professional society in computer science, as well as the American Philosophical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and other groups.
In 1993, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and in 1996 he was appointed its interim president — in part, the academy said in a statement about his death, to “restore its focus” and repair its frayed relations with the Academies of Medicine and Sciences. The next year he was elected to complete that presidential term and in 2001 he was elected to a full six-year term.
Today, many engineers — and even many computer scientists — know him less for his technical accomplishments than for his work at the academy, where, among other things, he theorized about the factors necessary to encourage engineering innovation (tax credits are ineffective, he contended, and monopolies are not necessarily a bad thing); argued ardently for greater diversity in the field (because it pays economic dividends); and, in one of his last official acts, established the Center for Engineering, Ethics and Society, which has produced reports offering guidance for dealing with complex technologies, including in genetics research and the teaching of evolution.
“The complexity of newly engineered systems coupled with their potential impact on lives, the environment, etc., raise a set of ethical issues that engineers had not been thinking about,” he said in a 2008 interview describing the center.
“I don’t mean to diminish his technical contributions,” Ed Lazowska, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, said in an interview. Both Dr. Wulf and Dr. Jones “are giants in the field,” he said, but Dr. Wulf will be most remembered for his inspiring leadership in engineering.
In particular, he said, Dr. Wulf was “a huge champion of broadening participation in the field” by not only women and members of other underrepresented groups, but also people who did not necessarily come from “big research universities, mostly on the coasts.”
