John Backus
Updated: 09/15/2017 by Computer Hope
Name: John Backus
Born: December 3, 1924, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Death: March 17, 2007 (Age: 83)
Computer related contributions
- American computer scientist.
- Directed the team that invented the first widely used high-level programming language (FORTRAN).
- Inventor of the Backus-Naur form (BNF), the almost universally used notation to define formal language syntax.
- Known for Speedcoding; FORTRAN; ALGOL; Backus-Naur form; Function-level programming.
Honors and awards
- Named an IBM Fellow (1963)
- Awarded W.W. McDowell Award (1967)
- Received National Medal of Science (1975)
- Awarded ACM Turing Award (1977)
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1985)
- Awarded degree honoris causa from the Université Henri Poincaré (1989)
- Awarded Draper Prize (1993)
- Awarded Computer History Museum Fellow Award (1997)
- Asteroid 6830 Johnbackus named in his honor (2007)
Quotes
"They don't like thinking in medical school. They memorize - that's all they want you to do. You must not think."
"Much of my work comes from being lazy."