# The Essential Nancy Lynch

DevFeed: [The Essential Nancy Lynch](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-essential-nancy-lynch-12456.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://brooker.co.za/blog/2014/05/10/lynch-pub.html>)

Author: Marc Brooker

Published: 2014-05-10T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Marc Brooker's Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/marc-brooker-s-blog.md>), [Marc Brooker's Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/marc-brooker-s-blog-2.md>)

Topics: [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/distributed-systems.md>), [Algorithms, Complexity](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/algorithms-complexity.md>), [Availability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/availability.md>)

Tags: [algorithms](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/algorithms.md>), [availability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/availability.md>), [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed-systems.md>), [history](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/history.md>), [publications](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/publications.md>), [worth-reading](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/worth-reading.md>)

## AI overview

The article recommends selected Nancy Lynch papers on distributed systems, focusing on impossibility results, bounds, consensus, atomicity, and the CAP theorem. It highlights the papers' historical value, readability, and usefulness as guides to further distributed-systems research.

## Source excerpt

The Essential Nancy Lynch Some of my favorite Nancy Lynch publications. While reading distributed systems papers, one of the names that comes up most often is Nancy Lynch's. From a standard textbook for university distributed systems courses (Distributed Algorithms), to some of the earliest successful results on consensus, to the proof of the CAP theorem, Lynch's name is everywhere. In the same spirit as The Essential Leslie Lamport, I thought I'd write about some of my favorite Nancy Lynch papers. The criteria are the same as last time: I like these papers for some reason. I'd probably make a different list if I wrote this post again next week. What good are impossibility results, anyway? They don't seem very useful at first, since they don't allow computers to do anything they couldn't previously. A Hundred Impossibility Proofs for Distributed Computing is a great read. It covers a huge amount of ground across most of the distributed systems field as it stood in 1989, and presents an overwhelming number of results. The focus is on impossibility results and bounds (as the title suggests), but the paper frequently wanders off this path. This paper is worth reading on it's own, but it's also a really great way to discover distributed systems papers you haven't seen before. With 103 references, there's plenty to keep you busy if you're looking for papers and books to read. Despite covering some deep results quite formally, the paper remains readable even without deep expertise in some of the areas it covers. A Hundred Impossibility Proofs is also a great piece of history, a snapshot of the distributed systems world 25 years ago. Why this is worth reading: It presents a huge number of results in a very compact and readable package. You won't get bored reading this paper. However the read request does not begin until after the write request ... has completed. This therefore contradicts the atomicity property, proving that no such algorithm exists. The algorithm that doesn