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On October 16th 2016 the Founder of CIPS and “Father of Computing in Canada” Calvin C. (Kelly) Gotlieb sadly passed away at the age of 95 and will be greatly missed. Kelly was an amazing individual who touched the lives of the IT community across Canada, and is an inspiration to all both professionally and personally.

Click Here to view the page “Remembering CIPS Founder and “Father of Computing in Canada” Calvin C. (Kelly) Gotlieb” dedicated to remembering and honouring Kelly’s amazing life and accomplishments.

Calvin C. (Kelly) Gotlieb

C.M., M.A., PhD.D. (University of Toronto) D. Math. (Hon., University of Waterloo) D. Eng. (Hon., Technical University of Nova Scotia) Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the British Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery

Professor C.C. Gotlieb was Professor Emeritus in Computer Science and in the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto.

He was a Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Encyclopaedia Britannica and of the Annals of the History of Computing. He belonged to a number of scientific national and international organizations.


Career Highlights
Professor Gotlieb dedicated much of his professional work to the promotion of information science and technology and the advancement of national and international cooperation in this field. He was also a recipient of the Order of Canada for his work in establishing CIPS as Canada’s association for IT professionals.


Selected Contributions to CIPS

  • Founding Member of CIPS in September 1958
  • Third President of CIPS
  • Chairman of the National Awards Nominating Sub-Committee, 1988-89
  • in 1988 CIPS established the C.C. Gotlieb Award which is presented annually to a Member who is widely recognized for outstanding contribution to CIPS through years of substantial efforts on behalf of the Society


Selected Contributions to other Professional Associations

  • served as Canada’s representative at the founding meeting of IFIP in 1959
  • served as Canada’s IFIP representative from 1960-1966
  • former editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Association of Computing Machinery
  • Chairman of the IFIP Technical Committee (TC-9) on the Relationship between Computers and Society (1975-1981)
  • Chairman of the Association for Computing Machinery Awards Committee (1988-1993)


Selected Academic and Professional Contributions

  • has been called the “Father of Computing” in Canada
  • in 1948, along with Dr. Josef Kates and Dr. Harvey Gellman, Professor Gotlieb formed the first team in Canada assembled to design and construct digital computers and to provide computing services
  • co-founder of the original Computation Centre at the University of Toronto in 1948
  • established the first university credit course on computing in Canada on 1950, he offered the first Canadian graduate courses in computing in 1951 and in 1964 he founded the first graduate department of computer science in Canada, at the University of Toronto
  • consultant to the United Nations on Computer Technology and Development
  • consultant to the Privacy and Computers Task Force of the Canadian Federal Department of Communications and Justice


Publications (total number over 100) include:

  • High Speed Data Processing co-authored with J.N.P. Hume. 1958
  • Social Issues in Computing co-authored with A. Borodin, was published by Academic Press Inc., in New York in 1973
  • Data Types and Structures co-authored with Leo Gotlieb, Prentice-Hall, 1973
  • The Economics of Computers, Prentice-Hall, 1985
  • research and survey papers in many areas of computer science and information processing