John Backus

John Warner Backus (December 3, 1924 – March 17, 2007) was an American computer scientist. He directed the team that invented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language. He was the inventor of the Backus–Naur form (BNF).[1]

John Backus
John Backus 2.jpg
Backus in December 1989
Born
John Warner Backus

(1924-12-03)December 3, 1924
DiedMarch 17, 2007(2007-03-17) (aged 82)
Alma materUniversity of Virginia
Columbia University (B.S. 1949, M.S. 1950)
Known forSpeedcoding
FORTRAN
ALGOL
Backus–Naur form
Function-level programming
AwardsNational Medal of Science (1975)
ACM Turing Award (1977)
Charles Stark Draper Prize (1993)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
InstitutionsIBM

He received the National Medal of Science in 1975[2] and the 1977 ACM Turing Award.[3]

References

  1. "W. Wallace McDowell Award". Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved April 15, 2008.
  2. "The President's National Medal of Science: John Backus". National Science Foundation. Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved March 21, 2007.
  3. "ACM Turing Award Citation: John Backus". Association for Computing Machinery. Archived from the original on February 4, 2007. Retrieved March 22, 2007.