QnAs with Nancy A. Lynch.

In computer science, distributed systems involve many processors cooperating to complete a certain task—a field with significance for the current age of wireless communications and cloud computing. Nancy Lynch, the NEC Professor of Software Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, literally wrote the book on distributed computing. Her textbook Distributed Algorithms is considered a definitive reference work for the field. Her contributions to the field include impossibility results—such as her well-known “FLP” result—that establish theoretical limits on what distributed systems can accomplish. In recognition of her work, Lynch was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2016, among numerous other awards and honors. PNAS spoke with Lynch about her work.