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Another Great Old One gone
2007-03-20 11:55 amJohn W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies - New York Times
A personal note: John Backus was one of my heros, not only as the inventor of Fortran but as one of the co-authors of Report on the Algorithmic Language Algol 60 (and incidentally the inventor of the BNF notation for programming-language syntax). Algol 60 was ground-breaking all by itself, but the Report was even more so: it still stands today as one of the best pieces of technical writing in history. (The link is to the Revised Report; the Report in its original form, as PDF, can be found via the ACM, but does not appear to be available free. It should be.)
John W. Backus, who assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, which helped open the door to modern computing, died on Saturday at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 82.(From engadget)
( the rest of the article )
A personal note: John Backus was one of my heros, not only as the inventor of Fortran but as one of the co-authors of Report on the Algorithmic Language Algol 60 (and incidentally the inventor of the BNF notation for programming-language syntax). Algol 60 was ground-breaking all by itself, but the Report was even more so: it still stands today as one of the best pieces of technical writing in history. (The link is to the Revised Report; the Report in its original form, as PDF, can be found via the ACM, but does not appear to be available free. It should be.)
