Fortran creator John Backus dies

On March 17, at the age of 83, John Backus, the founder of the formal specification of programming languages ​​and the author of the first high-level language Fortran, was awarded the 1977 Turing Prize for his outstanding achievements. Throughout his career, he worked at IBM.

In his youth, Backus tried to study at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Virginia, but was expelled from the second year for non-attendance. In the midst of World War II, he joined the US Army, after which he moved to New York and entered the radio technical school. She was followed by studies at Columbia University and a master's degree in mathematics, with which he got a job at IBM in 1950.

Among other young scientists, John got into the department engaged in the development of a “quick” interpreter, which was supposed to greatly simplify the interaction of a person with a computer. Soon, Backus headed this department and directed his work into the mainstream, which in 1954 led to the creation of the first version of the Fortran language and a convenient compiler for it. Despite the fact that Fortran was not the first high-level language, only he received at that time such a successful implementation, determining the development of the industry for many years to come.

“I didn’t like writing programs,” said Backus, “so when I was working on the classic IBM 701 on programs for calculating missile trajectories, I started to come up with a system that could make them easier to create.”

In the late 50s, Backus took an active part in the work on the Algol language (Algol-58 and its improvement - Algol-60, which is now simply called Algol). Algol, which had similar purposes to Fortran, gained wider popularity on the other side of the ocean - in Europe and the USSR. Today, it has retained its value as a wonderful tool for publishing algorithms.

It was in the process of working on Algol that Backus developed his normal form, which, after improvements by Peter Naur, became known as the “Backus-Naur Form” and was used to formally describe the syntax of algorithmic languages.

In 1991, Backus went on a well-deserved rest.