DOCTOR ABERRA MOLLA Nominated
by Seifu AbdiDr. Aberra Molla is the pioneer who computerized the Ethiopian alphabet - known as Ethiopic - for the fist time by giving a spot for each and every glyph. With the help of his son – Brook - it took Dr. Aberra a year to make one set of Geez screen and printer fonts in 1986. This was accomplished by systematically spreading the more than 400 Ethiopian alphabet glyphs on eight character sets. The first Ethiopic character set and word processor was released in 1987 and his Geez Microsoft DOS ModEth publisher is hailed as a classic work that moved the Ethiopian alphabet from the printing press to the computer for the first time.
Dr. Aberra Molla was introduced to computers in 1976 - during the punch card era - when he was a post–doctoral Clinical Science student at Colorado State University. He is a visionary who recognized the power of computers and its potential and was ahead of his time. Since 1982, he has been working with the Ethiopian alphabet and he succeeded in 1990 in standardizing Ethiopic and caused its inclusion in Unicode – an international standard. Examples of his accomplishments are pending patents and recognition in 1990 by the Ethiopian Research Council for computerizing Ethiopic and revolutionizing the Geez script. A prolific writer, an inventor, a scientist and a father of three engineers, Dr. Aberra is also deservingly credited with being the father of Ethiopic.
His successful innovative work has meant that Ethiopians can now and will in the future communicate in their native langue using computer devices. Dr. Aberra’s contributions and his place in the field of science and technology in Ethiopia is of major importance, especially in this so-called Age of Information Technology. And Ethiopians are grateful to him and his continuing innovative works and they say THANK YOU as they welcome the New Millennium.