Peter Schnell (computer scientist)

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Peter Schnell, Darmstadt 1959

Peter Schnell (born June 10, 1938 in Berlin ) is a German computer scientist and entrepreneur .

Life

He grew up in Alsbach near Darmstadt and studied physics and mathematics at the Technical University of Darmstadt . In 1965 he graduated as a mathematician with Alwin Walther . As a student he already gave courses in programming languages ​​and worked as a freelance programmer for Euratom and at the German Computer Center in Darmstadt. He continues to be known as a strong Go player .

Peter Schnell is one of a total of six founders of Software AG in Darmstadt, which emerged from the AIV (Institute for Applied Information Processing) and was its chairman for many years. Schnell designed and developed the database management system Adabas (Adaptable Database System) in this company . The qualified mathematician based his concept on the NF² database model (NF² stands for NFNF = non first normal form .). The high-performance system was put into operation for the first time in 1971 at the Westdeutsche Landesbank .
Schnell was responsible for the maintenance and further development of Adabas for mainframe systems from IBM and Siemens AG. The system was later used by numerous customers on the VMS operating system platforms from DEC , various Unix systems, Linux and Windows . Adabas enables up to 320,000 accesses per second to the database and is therefore internationally recognized as the fastest commercially available database management system.

In 1996, the sole shareholder left Software AG's executive board and did not move to the supervisory board. At that time, Software AG was active with 28 subsidiaries in 80 countries. More than 3,300 people were employed and the turnover at that time was around 800 million DM.

Peter Schnell then became the founder of the Software AG Foundation , one of the largest private foundations in Germany based in Darmstadt. At the beginning of 2011, the foundation held 29 percent of the shares in Software AG. After leaving his company, Schnell devoted himself entirely to the work of the foundation. He is an anthroposophist , so the foundation also supports many projects in the field of anthroposophy, including the University of Witten-Herdecke and the Alanus University in Bonn. The foundation has no direct connection with the anthroposophy movement; it is particularly active in helping the elderly and the disabled. One of the reasons for Schnell's social commitment was that he himself has two sons with intellectual disabilities.

In 2002 he received the medal for services to the foundation system of the Federal Association of German Foundations from Federal President Johannes Rau for his foundation work .

On May 7th, 2009 Peter Schnell was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class.

swell

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Go is also played in Darmstadt . Darmstädter Tagblatt, 27./28. September 1958, page 5, with picture .
  2. ↑ Laudation to Dr. hc Peter Schnell from Dr. Manfred Klett ( Memento from June 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Bettina Weiguny Portrait: Peter Schnell. The Anthroposophist , Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, February 27, 2011.
  4. ^ FAZ , Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung February 27, 2011, No. 8, p. 40, "The Anthroposophist"
  5. ↑ Federal Cross of Merit for Peter Schnell, founder of Software AG ( Memento from May 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Quick, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schnell, Peter M.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German software entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin