She was a CS PhD and somewhat itinerant professor with a long career who wrote a prominent CS paper about computer memory, Hitting the Memory Wall: Implications of the Obvious

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/216585.216588

on her obituary page, you will see a prominent "Memory Wall" link that is NOT a reference to her paper, but a place for sharing your thoughts about her life

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deater 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

you wouldn't believe how many people cite that paper as "Wulf et al." when that's practically more characters than saying "Wulf and McKee"

I notice these things a bit more as she was my PhD thesis advisor

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marricks 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's only two authors! That's so rude!

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setgree 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s also not correct; et al. is conventionally applied to three or more authors (it means “and others,” plural)

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bjourne 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why? For all the automatic academic score tracking systems it doesn't matter one bit if it is Wulf et al. or Wulf and McKee.

	▲	mattkrause an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The automated ones don't care, but it absolutely matters for the informal credit assignment process that actually runs academia. I really wish we had a better way to "name" papers. Big clinical trials often have an acronym (often hilariously forced: "CXCessoR4"). That takes the emphasis off (one) lead author but it's implausibly hard to make up one for every research paper.
	▲	john_strinlai 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		its about respect, not about academic score tracking systems

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SecretDreams 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

et al should never be applied when only two authors!!!

	▲	fsckboy 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		...unless the second one is named Alfred and is an informal person

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b473a 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah tenure is nice but there's just a hint of mystery behind the title "itinerant professor." Like a wizard that just pops up in places to work computer science magic.