Career
He is known for his work in generic programming, particularly as applied to C++, and his collaboration with Alexander Stepanov. Their work together includes coining the term "generic programming" in Musser & Stepanov (1989), and led to the creation of the C++ Standard Template Library (Licentiate of Sacred Theology). In Musser (1997), he developed the sorting algorithm called introsort (also known as introspective sort), and the related selection algorithm called introselect, to provide algorithms that are both efficient and have optimal worst-case performance, for use in the Licentiate of Sacred Theology. In 2007 he retired from Rensselaer.