COMPUTER SCIENTIST

John Backus

1924 - 2007

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John Warner Backus (December 3, 1924 – March 17, 2007) was an American computer scientist. He led the team that invented and implemented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language, and was the inventor of the Backus–Naur form (BNF), a widely used notation to define syntaxes of formal languages. He later did research into the function-level programming paradigm, presenting his findings in his influential 1977 Turing Award lecture "Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?" The IEEE awarded Backus the W. W. McDowell Award in 1967 for the development of FORTRAN. He received the National Medal of Science in 1975 and the 1977 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 publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages". John Backus retired in 1991. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. John Backus is the 21st most popular computer scientist (down from 18th in 2019), the 1,558th most popular biography from United States (down from 1,360th in 2019) and the 13th most popular American Computer Scientist.

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Among COMPUTER SCIENTISTS

Among computer scientists, John Backus ranks 21 out of 245. Before him are Linus Torvalds, Ray Kurzweil, Marvin Minsky, John Cocke, Don Norman, and Andrew S. Tanenbaum. After him are Ken Thompson, Alan Kay, Dorothy Vaughan, Vint Cerf, Larry Page, and Sudha Murty.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1924, John Backus ranks 60. Before him are Ante Marković, Eduardo Chillida, Ed Wood, Roberto Eduardo Viola, Ahmadou Ahidjo, and Michel Tournier. After him are Giovanni Sartori, Guy Williams, Georges Prêtre, Karmapa, Kenneth Kaunda, and Matthäus Hetzenauer. Among people deceased in 2007, John Backus ranks 48. Before him are Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Henri Troyat, Arawa Kimura, Momofuku Ando, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, and Abbé Pierre. After him are Oscar Peterson, Gaston Thorn, Vladimir Kryuchkov, Nobuo Matsunaga, Paul Watzlawick, and David Lane.

Others Born in 1924

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In United States

Among people born in United States, John Backus ranks 1,558 out of 20,380. Before him are Michael J. Sandel (1953), Sonny Liston (1932), Janet Yellen (1946), Norman Rockwell (1894), John Zorn (1953), and Norman Lloyd (1914). After him are Linda Harrison (1945), Tess Gerritsen (1953), Richard Smalley (1943), Claudia Goldin (1946), Carolyn R. Bertozzi (1966), and David Duchovny (1960).

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Among COMPUTER SCIENTISTS In United States

Among computer scientists born in United States, John Backus ranks 13. Before him are Donald Knuth (1938), Ray Kurzweil (1948), Marvin Minsky (1927), John Cocke (1925), Don Norman (1935), and Andrew S. Tanenbaum (1944). After him are Ken Thompson (1943), Alan Kay (1940), Dorothy Vaughan (1910), Vint Cerf (1943), Larry Page (1973), and George Dantzig (1914).

American born Computer Scientists

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