Kristen Nygaard
Updated: 09/15/2017 by Computer Hope
Name: Kristen Nygaard
Born: August 27, 1926, in Norway
Death: August 10, 2002 (Age: 75)
Computer-related contributions
- Norwegian computer scientist, programming language pioneer and politician.
- Together with Ole-Johan Dahl, he developed SIMULA I (1961–1965) and SIMULA-67, the first object-oriented programming languages. These languages introduced the concepts of objects, classes, inheritance, virtual quantities and multi-threaded program execution, the foundations of modern-day OOP.
Honors and awards
- A. M. Turing Award by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) (2002).
- IEEE John von Neumann Medal by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (2001).
- Made Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav by the King of Norway (2000).