Cèdric Gaudin interviews Prof. Jean-Daniel Nicoud

Prof. Jean-Daniel Nicoud studied physics at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), graduating in 1963 with a diploma. From 1965 he began to specialize in systems of logic and received his doctorate in 1970 with the writing Algorithmes et systèmes logiques spécialisés pour la conversion de code. In 1973 he was appointed professor at the EPFL. In 1974 he spent five months in the USA, where he worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, founded in 1957 in Maynard (Massachusetts), and developed a variant of the Smaky 4. He then returned to the EPFL.

In August 2000 he retired.

Nicoud’s research laboratory LAMI (Laboratoire de Micro-Informatique) developed the computer system Smaky, focusing on research and publications on the topic of microprocessors. Together with his colleague Niklaus Wirth, he developed the first Swiss computer mice.