John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

Backus assembled and led the IBM team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language.
The New York Times

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[Orion Blastar]

He will be missed, FORTRAN got us to the moon

FORTRAN also spawned a lot of other computer languages. FORTRAN taught people how to use formulas and made it possible to do complex math formulas in a computer language.

FORTRAN also lead the way for video games using those complex formulas to control the way things look.

[jmdecombe]

One of the giants of Computer Science

I wrote my first lines of code in COBOL and FORTRAN back in 1975.
And I always loved and used the Backus-Naur notation. Thank you
so much for all you've done for the world of computer science.

[sudokuscore]

Thank You John Backus

Just remembered my FORTRAN days during Engineering dtudent days with the "PC" (One slot for 5 1/4 disk, 512 KB RAM and no hard drive ). Thanks to all that you have done as foundation for today's IT and web which creates instant fame and billionares unlike yout time , which was sheer hard work and pure intelligence.

[sxs537]

I am indebted to you John Backus

Fortran got me through grad school and helped me in the first few years of my work till I decided to quit scientific programming. One of the easiest and most scientific language you can program in. Thank you Mr. Backus for making that happen. May you rest in peace

[the1kingarthur]

Thank You John

No words can describe what you have given us, or how great an example you have set for us to follow.

[george.gordon]

Without him, particle physics would be about 20 years behind current state!

In the 1960's Fortran was the mainstay of high energy physics, involved in analysis of the massive amounts of data produced by the particle colliders of the day. I recall "writing" Fortran on Hollerith punched cards for an IBM computer that had 32kb of RAM. The maths had to be organised to cope with that, involving much reading and writing to tape drives and disks the size of a washing machine. What fun! Fortran made it possible and was still much in use by physicists until quite recently.