John Backus, the developer of the Fortran programming
language, has died aged 82.
Fortran was designed for mathematicians and scientists, and it
remains the preeminent programming language in these areas
today.
It allows people to work with computers without having to learn
the machine's assembly language.
When Backus and a small band of IBM colleagues began their quest
in 1954 for a programming system that would enable a computer to
produce its own machine language programs, they weren't always sure
what they would come up with.
In 1967, Backus said, "As we began to solve one problem, it
split up into others we hadn't foreseen. In January 1955, we said
we would have it in less than a year. Finally, we did it in
1957."
What Backus and his fellow workers had created was Fortran, the
daddy of programming systems at the time.
That achievement won Backus the WW McDowell Award for
outstanding contributions to the computer field from the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1967.
He also received the US National Medal of Science, for
pioneering contributions to computer programming languages in
1973.
Sun unveils ‘Fortran replacement’
New York Times obituary
Los Angeles Times obituary
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