John Backus

1924–2007 — USA

Era: Modern

Brilliance: 9/10 | Stewardship: 8/10 | Composite Index: 72

Father of FORTRAN, revolutionized programming languages

"Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701, writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a system to make it easier to write programs."

Biography

John Backus invented FORTRAN, the first widelyused highlevel programming language that transformed computing from machine code to humanreadable syntax. His work democratized programming and established foundational principles for language design that influenced virtually every programming language that followed. He also developed BackusNaur Form (BNF), the standard notation for defining programming language grammars.

Key Facts

Created FORTRAN in 1954 at IBM, which became the dominant scientific computing language for decades
Developed Backus-Naur Form (BNF), still used today to formally specify programming language syntax
Won the Turing Award in 1977 for his contributions to programming languages
Championed functional programming later in his career, promoting alternatives to imperative paradigms
His work reduced programming time from weeks to days, enabling the computer revolution

One man made computers speak human. FORTRAN changed everything.

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