Lutz Michael Wegner
Lutz Michael Wegner (born October 11, 1949) is a German computer scientist from Weinsberg, Germany. He studied industrial engineering at the University of Karlsruhe, earning an MBA, and spent time as a visiting PhD student at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Wegner earned his PhD in 1977 with a thesis on the Analysis of two-level grammars. In 1982 he received the right to teach (venia legendi) in applied computer science at Karlsruhe, with a habilitation on Quicksort variants for multisets.
In 1984 he became a professor at Fulda University of Applied Sciences and, in 1987, moved to the University of Kassel. He led the database group there from 1989 until his retirement in March 2015.
His early research focused on two-level grammars (van Wijngaarden grammars), which were used to define the programming language Algol68. His work on this topic is noted in standard references on formal languages. For his second thesis, he developed Quicksort variants for multisets and showed they reach the theoretical lower bound.
After a sabbatical at the IBM Scientific Center Heidelberg, he became interested in the nested relational model (non-first normal-form data) and designed a graphical editor that supported research on synchronous groupware.
In 1986 he wrote an online course called "Introduction to Unix" as part of Hermann Maurer’s COSTOC project. The course was ported and used for many years, making it one of the longest-running examples of courseware.
Besides research, Wegner helped establish computer science degree programs (Bachelor and Master) at the University of Kassel, starting in 2001 with support from Traudl Herrhausen and others, helping to connect the university with industry and charities.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 12:39 (CET).