David Gries (April 26, 1939- ) is an American computer scientist mainly known for his books The Science of Programming (1981) and A Logical Approach to Discrete Math (1993, with Fred B. Schneider). His research interests include compiler writing, programming methodology and related areas such as programming languages, related semantics, and logic. Gries was an advocate of teaching formal methods in programming as a core computer science topic and teaching it to undergraduates, a stance that found large amounts of debate within the computer science education community. In any case, Gries’ reputation as a teacher was such that around 700 students and fellow faculty members were in attendance for his final lecture, given to his “Programming and Data Structures” class, in May 2022.

He earned a Bachelor of Science from Queens College in 1960. He spent the next two years working as a programmer-mathematician for the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory. He earned as Master of Science in mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne in 1963. While at Illinois, Gries worked with Manfred Paul and Ruediger Wiehle to write a full compiler for the language ALGOL 60 for the IBM 7090 mainframe computer. He earned his Dr. rer. Nat in 1966 from the Technical University of Munich, studying under Friedrich L. Bauer and Josef Stoer.

Gries was an assistant professor at Stanford University from 1966-1969 before becoming an associate professor at Cornell University. He spent the next 20 years at Cornell, including time as Chair of the Computer Science Department from 1982 to 1987. He spent 1999 to 2002 at the University of Georgia in Athens and returned to Cornell in January 2003. He was associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs in the Cornell University College of Engineering from 2003 to 2011. He was one of the first ten Weiss Presidential Fellows at Cornell.

Gries is author, co-author, or editor of seven textbooks and 75 research papers. His 1971 work Compiler Construction for Digital Computers was the first textbook to be published on designing and implementing language compilers. It was also one of the first textbooks to be written and produced using computers, in this case punched cards input to a text-formatting program that ran on an IBM System/360 Model 65. The early technology used eventually resulted in the book having a somewhat dated appearance. Compiler Construction for Digital Computers sold well and went through more than twenty printings. His other textbooks include An Introduction to Programming – A Structured Approach Using PL/I, PL/C, and PL/C7 (1973, co-written with Richard W. Conway), Programming Methodology: A Collection of Articles by Members of IFIP WG3.2 (1979), The Science of Programming (1981), and A Logical Approach to Discrete Math (1993). The textbook An Introduction to Programming: A Structured Approach, Using PL/I, PL/C, and PL/C7 used the PL/C dialect developed at Cornell and went through several editions and adaptations. It stressed the discipline of structured programming throughout, becoming one of the most prominent textbooks to do so, and introduced considerations of program correctness, becoming the first introductory textbook to do so.

Gries served as Chair of the Computing Research Board in the late 1980s, spearheading its morph into the Computing Research Association – opening an office in Washington, D.C. and beginning to actively represent the research and education interests of Computer Science there. He was also active in editorial duties. After about 40 years as editor and managing co-editor of Information Processing Letters, he was given the title of Honorary Editor-in-Chief. He has also been editor of the Springer-Verlag Series on Text and Monographs in Computer Science since 1973.