Larry Tesler

Lawrence Gordon "Larry" Tesler (April 24, 1945 – February 16, 2020) was a computer scientist and an early employee of Apple Computer who worked on the development of the Apple Lisa and Newton.

Education
Tesler enrolled at Stanford University in 1961 at the age of 16 and earned a degree in mathematics in 1965.

Xerox
Alan Kay had worked to recruit Tesler into Xerox in the early 1970s. Tesler joined Xerox PARC in 1973, where the was being developed with a pioneering graphical user interface. Tesler and colleague Tim Mott collaborated on developing the now-standard copy and paste function. When Steve Jobs and a group of Apple engineers visited the PARC facility in 1979, Tesler demonstrated the Alto to them.

Apple Computer
Tesler and several other PARC staff joined Apple Computer in 1980. Tesler became involved in the development of the Apple Lisa.

When Steve Sakoman and Jean-Louis Gassée left Apple in 1980, CEO John Sculley assigned Tesler to salvage their unfinished Newton project. Tesler brought in Steve Capps who became chief architect of the mobile platform. Tesler then became chief scientist of the Advanced Technology Group and left Apple in 1997.

Articles

 * Larry Tesler obituary by Jack Schofield at The Guardian (2020-02-28)
 * Larry Tesler, the UI pioneer responsible for cut, copy, and paste, dies at 74 by Jay Peters at The Verge (2020-02-19)