In this manuscript I overview my work on developing a Theory for Distributed Systems -- work that has involved many students and other collaborators. This effort started at Georgia Tech in the late 1970s, and has continued at MIT since 1981. This manuscript emphasizes the earlier contributions, and their impact on the directions of the field. These contributions include new distributed algorithms; rigorous proofs and analysis; discovery of errors in previous algorithms; lower bounds and other impossibility results expressing inherent limitations on the power of distributed systems; general mathematical foundations for modeling and analyzing distributed systems; and applications of these methods to understanding a variety of practical distributed systems, including distributed data-management systems, wired and wireless communication systems, and biological systems.

翻译：本文概述了我在构建分布式系统理论方面的研究工作——这些工作涉及众多学生及其他合作者。该研究始于1970年代末在佐治亚理工学院，并自1981年起在麻省理工学院持续开展。本文重点阐述早期贡献及其对领域发展方向的影响。这些贡献包括：新型分布式算法；严格的证明与分析；对前人算法中错误的发现；表达分布式系统能力固有局限性的下界及其他不可能性结果；用于建模与分析分布式系统的通用数学基础；以及将这些方法应用于理解各类实际分布式系统，包括分布式数据管理系统、有线与无线通信系统以及生物系统。