John backus miami
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John Backus
American computer scientist
This article is about the computer scientist. For the physicist, see John Backus (acoustician). For the minister, see John Chester 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?"[1]
The IEEE awarded Backus the W. W. McDowell Award in 1967 for the development of FORTRAN.[2] He received the National Medal of Science in 1975[3] 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 fo
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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Ashland, Jackson, Oregon, USA
Biography
John Backus's parents were Cecil Franklin Backus (1885-1966) and Elizabeth Warner Edsall (1904-1933). Cecil Backus graduated with a degree in chemistry from the University of Virginia in 1906 and worked for the Eastern Laboratory of the E I Dupont De Nemours Powder Company before moving to work for the Atlas Powder Company in Wilmington, Delaware. He worked for the investment banking firm of Gillespie & Meeds from 1920 to 1922. This firm became Laird, Bissell & Meeds and he was a partner from 1923 to 1940. Elizabeth Edsall, John's mother, was the daughter of a Wilmington physician. Cecil and Elizabeth were married on 28 May 1921 in Wilmington, New Castle, Delaware. They had three children, Anne Hall Backus (born 25 March 1922), John Warner Backus (the subject of this bio- •
John Warner Backus
Born December 3, 1924, Philadelphia, Pa.; leader of the IBM team that created the programming language Fortran; inventor of the metalanguage BNF, known variously as Backus-Normal or Backus-Naur Form; currently Proponent of improved methods of programming such as the functional approach.
Education: BS, mathematics, Columbia University, 1949; AM, mathematics, Columbia University, 1950.
Professional Experience: IBM Corp.: programmer, Pure and Applied Science Departments, 1950-1953, manager, Programming Research Department, 1954-1958, IBM Research Staff, 1958-1963, IBM fellow, 1963-1991; adjunct professor of information sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1974; visiting professor, University of California, Berkeley, 1980,1985.
Honors and Awards: IBM fellow, 1963; W.W. McDowell Award, IEEE, 1967; National Medal of Science, 1975; ACM Turing Award, 1977; IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award, 1980; member, National Academy of Sciences; member, National Academy of Engineers; Charles Stark Draper Award, National Academy of Engineering (NAE), 199
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