sciences. Examples include QNX operating systems co-creators Gordon Bell and Dan Dodge, Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of the PHP scripting language, Matei Zaharia, the creator of Apache Spark, Gordon Cormack, the co-creator of the Dynamic Markov compression algorithm, Ric Holt, co-creator of several programming languages, most notably Turing, Jack Edmonds, a computer scientist, and developer of the Blossom algorithm, and the Edmonds' algorithm, Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, and William Thomas Tutte, a World War II codebreaker who cracked the Nazi high command's Lorenz Cypher. Graduates from the university have also risen to prominence in other fields. Heather Moyse, a graduate from the kinesiology program, is a prominent Canadian athlete and two-time Olympic bobsleigh gold medalist. Moyse has represented Canada in international bobsleigh, rugby and track cycling competitions. Graduate of the Rhetoric and Professional Writing program, Rupi Kaur is a Canadian poet, writer, illustrator. Her book of poetry, Milk and Honey, has spent over a year on The New York Times' bestsellers list, reaching No. 1 in January 2017. George Elliott Clarke, who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2012 to 2015 and as the 2016–2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate, graduated with an English degree. On 2 October 2018, Donna Strickland, an associate professor at the Physics and Astronomy Department, was awarded the Nobel prize in physics. Strickland is the third woman to have ever been awarded the prize in physics. This was the first Nobel prize for a member of the university's faculty. Strickland was honoured for being half of the team to discover chirped pulse amplification, a technique that underpins today's short-pulse, high-intensity lasers. Scientific American explained the practical aspects of the invention as it applies in the most noteworthy application: it allows for "ultrabrief, ultrasharp beams can be used to make extremely precise cuts, so their technique is now used in laser machining and enables doctors to perform millions of corrective" laser eye surgeries. See also Higher education in Ontario J. W. Graham Medal List of Canadian universities by endowment List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation List of universities in Ontario Midnight Sun Solar Race Team University of Waterloo Nano Robotics Group Waterloo Global Science Initiative Footnotes References Further reading External links Official athletics website Educational institutions established in 1956 1956 establishments in Ontario Universities in Ontario Waterloo