John Backus
John Warner Backus (December 3, 1924 – March 17, 2007) was an American computer scientist. He led the team that invented and implemented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language, and was the inventor of the Backus–Naur form (BNF), a widely used notation to define syntaxes of formal languages. He later did research into the function-level programming paradigm, presenting his findings in his influential 1977 Turing Award lecture "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?"
John Backus | |
|---|---|
Backus in December 1989 | |
| Born | John Warner Backus December 3, 1924 |
| Died | March 17, 2007 (aged 82) |
| Alma mater | University of Virginia University of Pittsburgh Haverford College Columbia University (B.S. 1949, M.S. 1950) |
| Known for | Speedcoding FORTRAN ALGOL Backus–Naur form Function-level programming |
| Spouses | Marjorie Jamison
(m. 1947–1966)Barbara Una
(m. 1968; died 2004) |
| Children | 2 |
| Awards | National Medal of Science (1975) Turing Award (1977) Charles Stark Draper Prize (1993) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Institutions | IBM |
The IEEE awarded Backus the W. W. McDowell Award in 1967 for the development of FORTRAN. He received the National Medal of Science in 1975 and the 1977 Turing Award "for profound, influential, and lasting contributions to the design of practical high-level programming systems, notably through his work on FORTRAN, and for publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages".
John Backus retired in 1991. He died at his home in Ashland, Oregon on March 17, 2007.