Backus

John Backus

Born: 3 Dec 1924 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Died: 

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Backus was a graduate of Columbia University, New York. He joined IBM as a programmer in 1950. He is the inventor of FORTRAN, the first high level computer language to be developed. It became commercially available in 1957. In 1959 he invented the Backus Normal Form (BNF), a standard notation to describe the syntax of a programming language.

Other Web sites:

Information on BNF: Geneva, Switzerland

References:

  1. D Shasha and C Lazere, John Backus, in Out of their minds : The lives and discoveries of 15 great computer scientists (New York, 1995), 1-4.
  2. J W Backus, The History of Fortran I, II and III, History of Programming Languages (New York, 1981). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996