Citizendia
Your Ad Here

John Backus

Born December 3, 1924(1924-12-03)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died March 17, 2007 (aged 82)
Ashland, Oregon
Fields Computer Science
Institutions IBM
Known for Speedcoding
FORTRAN
Backus-Naur form
Function-level programming
Notable awards ACM Turing Award
Draper Prize

John Warner Backus (December 3, 1924 – March 17, 2007) was an American computer scientist. Events 1800 - War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Hohenlinden, French Year 1924 ( MCMXXIV) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Philadelphia (ˌfɪləˈdɛlfiə Events 45 BC - In his last victory Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Ashland is a city in Jackson County, Oregon, United States, near Interstate 5 and the California Computer science (or computing science) is the study and the Science of the theoretical foundations of Information and Computation and their International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology Speedcoding or Speedcode was the first higher-level language created for an IBM computer. Fortran (previously FORTRAN) is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative Programming language that is especially suited to In Computer science, Backus–Naur Form ( BNF) is a Metasyntax used to express Context-free grammars that is a formal way to describe Formal In computer science function-level programming refers to one of the two contrasting Programming paradigms identified by John Backus in his work on Programs as The A M Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing The National Academy of Engineering awards annually the Charles Stark Draper Prize, which is given for the advancement of engineering and the education of the public about Events 1800 - War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Hohenlinden, French Year 1924 ( MCMXXIV) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Events 45 BC - In his last victory Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. A computer scientist is a person that has acquired knowledge of Computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application He led the team that invented the first widely used high-level programming language (FORTRAN) and was the inventor of the Backus-Naur form (BNF), the almost universally used notation to define formal language syntax. In computing a high-level programming language is a Programming language with strong abstraction from the details of the computer A programming language is an Artificial language that can be used to write programs which control the behavior of a machine particularly a Computer. Fortran (previously FORTRAN) is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative Programming language that is especially suited to In Computer science, Backus–Naur Form ( BNF) is a Metasyntax used to express Context-free grammars that is a formal way to describe Formal A formal language is a set of words, ie finite strings of letters, or symbols. In Linguistics, syntax (from Ancient Greek grc συν- syn-, "together" and grc τάξις táxis, "arrangement" is the He also did research in function-level programming and helped to popularize it. In computer science function-level programming refers to one of the two contrasting Programming paradigms identified by John Backus in his work on Programs as

The IEEE awarded Backus the W.W. McDowell Award in 1967 for the development of FORTRAN [1]. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (read eye-triple-e) is an international Non-profit, professional organization The W Wallace McDowell Award is bestowed by the IEEE Computer Society for outstanding recent theoretical design educational practical or other similar innovative contributions Year 1967 ( MCMLXVII) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. He received the National Medal of Science in 1975,[2] and the 1977 ACM Turing Award “for profound, influential, and lasting contributions to the design of practical high-level programming systems, notably through his work on FORTRAN, and for seminal publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages. The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in Science and Engineering who have made important Also 1977 (album by Ash. Year 1977 ( MCMLXXVII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays The A M Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing ”[3]

Contents

Life and career

Backus was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. Philadelphia (ˌfɪləˈdɛlfiə Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine He studied at the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and was apparently not a diligent student. The Hill School (aka The Hill is an American preparatory Boarding school for boys and girls in grades nine through twelve Pottstown is a borough in Montgomery County, 40 miles (64 km northwest of Philadelphia, on the Schuylkill River. [4] After entering the University of Virginia to study chemistry, he quit and was drafted into the U. The University of Virginia (also called UVa, UVA, Mr Jefferson's University, or The University) is a highly selective public research Chemistry (from Egyptian kēme (chem meaning "earth") is the Science concerned with the composition structure and properties S. Army. [4] He began medical training and, during an internship at a hospital, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, which was successfully removed; a plate was installed in his head, and he dropped out of medical training after nine months and a subsequent operation to replace the plate with one of his own design [5]. A brain tumor is any intracranial Tumor created by abnormal and uncontrolled cell division, normally either in the Brain itself ( Neurons

After moving to New York City he initially took training as a radio technician and discovered an interest in mathematics — it would prove to be his calling. The City of New York Mathematics is the body of Knowledge and Academic discipline that studies such concepts as Quantity, Structure, Space and He graduated from Columbia University with a Master's degree in 1949, and joined IBM in 1950. Columbia University is a private University in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Year 1949 ( MCMXLIX) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology Year 1950 ( MCML) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. During his first three years, he worked on the SSEC; his first major project was to write a program to calculate positions of the Moon. The IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator ( SSEC) also called Poppa, was an electromechanical Computer built by IBM, finished in January In 1953, John Backus also developed the language Speedcoding, the first higher-order language created for an IBM computer [6]. Speedcoding or Speedcode was the first higher-level language created for an IBM computer.

The difficulties of programming were acute, and in 1954 Backus assembled a team to define and develop Fortran for the IBM 704 computer. Year 1954 ( MCMLIV) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1954 Gregorian calendar) The IBM 704, the first mass-produced Computer with Floating point arithmetic hardware was introduced by IBM in April 1954. Though debatably not the first high-level programming language, it was the first to achieve wide use.

John Backus made another, critical contribution to early computer science: During the latter part of the 1950s Backus served on the international committees which developed ALGOL 58 and the very influential ALGOL 60, which quickly became the de facto worldwide standard for publishing algorithms. The 1950s Decade refers to the years of 1950 to 1959 inclusive ALGOL 58, originally known as IAL, is one of the family of ALGOL computer Programming languages It was an early compromise design soon superseded by Algol (β Per / Beta Persei known colloquially as the Demon Star, is a bright Star in the Constellation Perseus. In Mathematics, Computing, Linguistics and related subjects an algorithm is a sequence of finite instructions often used for Calculation Backus developed the Backus-Naur Form (BNF), in the UNESCO report on ALGOL 58. In Computer science, Backus–Naur Form ( BNF) is a Metasyntax used to express Context-free grammars that is a formal way to describe Formal This was a formal notation with which one could describe any context-free programming language and was important in the development of compilers. In Formal language theory, a context-free language is a language generated by some Context-free grammar. This contribution helped Backus win the Turing Award. The A M Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing

He later worked on a “function-level” programming language known as FP which was described in his Turing Award lecture “Can Programming be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?” Sometimes viewed as Backus’s apology for creating FORTRAN, this paper did less to garner interest in the FP language than to spark research into functional programming in general. In computer science function-level programming refers to one of the two contrasting Programming paradigms identified by John Backus in his work on Programs as FP (short for F unction P rogramming is a Programming language created by John Backus to support the Function-level programming A von Neumann language is any of those Programming languages that are high-level abstract isomorphic copies of Von Neumann architectures As of 2004 most In Computer science, functional programming is a Programming paradigm that treats Computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and An FP interpreter was distributed with the 4.2BSD Unix operating system. In Computer science, an interpreter normally means a Computer program that executes, i Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer FP was strongly inspired by Kenneth E. Iverson’s APL, even using a non-standard character set. Kenneth Eugene Iverson ( 17 December, 1920 - 19 October, 2004) was a Canadian Computer scientist noted for the development A character encoding consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given character set (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Code page Backus spent the latter part of his career developing FL (from “Function Level”), a successor to FP. FL (short for F unction L evel is a Programming language created at the IBM Almaden Research Center by John Backus John Williams and Edward FL was an internal IBM research project, and development of the language essentially stopped when the project was finished (only a few papers documenting it remain), but many of the language’s innovative, arguably important ideas have now been implemented in Iverson’s J programming language. Not to be confused with the J++ or J# programming languages The J programming language, developed in the early 1990s by

Backus was named an IBM Fellow in 1963,[7] and was awarded a honoris causa from the University Henri Poincaré in Nancy (France) in 1989[8] and a Draper Prize in 1993[9]. An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM’s CEO. Year 1963 ( MCMLXIII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa ( Latin: 'for the sake of the honour' is an Academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding Nancy (nɑ̃si archaic Nanzig Nanzeg is a city and commune in the Lorraine région of northeastern France Year 1989 ( MCMLXXXIX) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link displays 1989 Gregorian calendar) The National Academy of Engineering awards annually the Charles Stark Draper Prize, which is given for the advancement of engineering and the education of the public about Year 1993 ( MCMXCIII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1993 Gregorian calendar) He retired in 1991 and died at his home in Ashland, Oregon on March 17, 2007. Year 1991 ( MCMXCI) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar. Ashland is a city in Jackson County, Oregon, United States, near Interstate 5 and the California Events 45 BC - In his last victory Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. [4]

Awards and Honours

References

  1. ^ a b W. Wallace McDowell Award. An IBM Fellow is an appointed position at IBM made by IBM’s CEO. The W Wallace McDowell Award is bestowed by the IEEE Computer Society for outstanding recent theoretical design educational practical or other similar innovative contributions The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in Science and Engineering who have made important The A M Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa ( Latin: 'for the sake of the honour' is an Academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding The National Academy of Engineering awards annually the Charles Stark Draper Prize, which is given for the advancement of engineering and the education of the public about The Computer History Museum is a Museum established in 1996 in Mountain View California, when The Computer Museum (TCM in Boston) Asteroids, sometimes called Minor planets or planetoids', are bodies—primarily of the inner Solar System —that are smaller than planets but 6830 Johnbackus (1991 JB1 is a Main-belt Asteroid discovered on May 5, 1991 by S Retrieved on 2008-04-15. 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Events 1450 - Battle of Formigny: Toward the end of the Hundred Years' War, the French attack and nearly annihilate English
  2. ^ a b The President's National Medal of Science: John Backus. National Science Foundation. Retrieved on 2007-03-21. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 630 - Byzantine emperor Heraclius restores the True Cross to Jerusalem.
  3. ^ a b ACM Turing Award Citation: John Backus. Association for Computing Machinery. The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational Computing society Retrieved on 2007-03-22. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 238 - Gordian I and his son Gordian II are proclaimed Roman emperor.
  4. ^ a b c Lohr, Steve. "John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies", New York Times, 2007-03-20. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1600 - The Linköping Bloodbath takes place on Maundy Thursday in Linköping, Sweden. Retrieved on 2007-03-21. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 630 - Byzantine emperor Heraclius restores the True Cross to Jerusalem.  
  5. ^ Shasha, Dennis; Cathy Lazere (1998). Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists. New York: Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. . ISBN 0-387-98269-8.  
  6. ^ Allen, F. E. . "The History of Language Processor Technology in IBM". IBM Journal of Research Development 25 (5, September 1981).  
  7. ^ a b John Backus. IBM Archives. Retrieved on 2007-03-21. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 630 - Byzantine emperor Heraclius restores the True Cross to Jerusalem.
  8. ^ a b John Backus. Retrieved on 2008-04-15. 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Events 1450 - Battle of Formigny: Toward the end of the Hundred Years' War, the French attack and nearly annihilate English
  9. ^ a b Recipients of the Charles Stark Draper Prize.
  10. ^ Fellow Awards 1997 Recipient John Backus. Retrieved on 2008-04-15. 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Events 1450 - Battle of Formigny: Toward the end of the Hundred Years' War, the French attack and nearly annihilate English

External links


Persondata
NAME Backus, John Warner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH March 17, 2007
PLACE OF DEATH Ashland, Oregon
Computer science (or computing science) is the study and the Science of the theoretical foundations of Information and Computation and their Events 1800 - War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Hohenlinden, French Year 1924 ( MCMXXIV) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Philadelphia (ˌfɪləˈdɛlfiə Events 45 BC - In his last victory Julius Caesar defeats the Pompeian forces of Titus Labienus and Pompey the Younger Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Ashland is a city in Jackson County, Oregon, United States, near Interstate 5 and the California
© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
 Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic