John Backus (nonfiction): Difference between revisions
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[[File:John_Backus.jpg|thumb|John Backus.]]'''John Warner Backus''' (December | [[File:John_Backus.jpg|thumb|John Backus.]]'''John Warner Backus''' (3 December 1924 – 17 March 2007) was an American computer scientist. | ||
He directed 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 formal language syntax. | He directed 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 formal language syntax. | ||
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* [[John von Neumann (nonfiction)]] | * [[John von Neumann (nonfiction)]] | ||
External links | == External links == | ||
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Backus John Backus] @ Wikipedia | * [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Backus John Backus] @ Wikipedia | ||
Latest revision as of 08:22, 3 December 2020
John Warner Backus (3 December 1924 – 17 March 2007) was an American computer scientist.
He directed 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 formal language syntax.
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?"
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 ACM 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”.
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Nonfiction cross-reference
External links
- John Backus @ Wikipedia