People Clarence Ellis
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Clarence Ellis (Skip)
Computer scientist; professor emeritus, University of Colorado Boulder (1943–2014)
Who
Clarence "Skip" Ellis was the first African American to earn a PhD in computer science, at the University of Illinois in 1969. At Xerox PARC from 1976 to 1984 he led the group that built Officetalk, an early office system that used icons and Ethernet so people could work together at a distance. He helped found the field of computer-supported cooperative work, and was named an ACM Fellow in 1997. He retired from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2010 and died on May 17, 2014.