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Peter Naur Wins 2005 Turing Award
An anonymous reader writes "The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named Peter Naur the winner of the 2005 A.M. Turing Award. The award is for Dr. Naur's fundamental contributions to programming language design and the definition of Algol 60, to compiler design, and to the art and practice of computer programming. The Turing Award is considered to be the Nobel Prize of computing, and a well-deserved recognition of Dr. Naur's pioneering contributions to the field."
This may help to explain his importance even to this day:
The Backus-Naur form (BNF) (also known as the Backus-Naur formalism, Backus normal form or Panini-Backus Form) is a metasyntax used to express context-free grammars: that is, a formal way to describe formal languages.
Taken from the wikipedia page.
liqbase
John Backus won the award in 1977 though, so it is quite legitimate to ask, as the original poster did, why they didn't recognize Naur sooner.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
BNF originally stood for "Backus Normal Form", and the name Backus Naur Form was introduced by Donald Knuth:
@article{365140,
author = {Donald E. Knuth},
title = {Backus Normal Form vs. Backus Naur form},
journal = {Commun. ACM},
volume = {7},
number = {12},
year = {1964},
issn = {0001-0782},
pages = {735--736},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/355588.365140},
publisher = {ACM Press},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
}
Georg
1. The Report on the language used a formal syntax specification, one of the first, if not the first, to do so. Semantics were specfied with prose, however.
2. There was a distinction between the publication language and the implementation language (those probably aren't the right terms). Among other things, it got around differences such as whether to use decimal points or commas in numeric constants.
3. Designed by a committee, rather than a private company or government agency.
4. Archetype of the so-called "Algol-like languages," examples of which are (were?) Pascal, PL./I, Algol68, Ada, C, and Java. (The term Algol-like languages is hardly used any more, since we have few examples of contemporary non-Algol-like languages.)
However, as someone who actually programmed in it (on a Univac 1108 in 1972 or 1973), I can say that Algol60 was extremely difficult to use for anything real, since it lacked string processing, data structures, adequate control flow constructs, and separate compilation. (Or so I recall... it's been a while since I've read the Report.)
It took a while because noone nominated him until now. As a matter of fact, I am a senior Computer Engineer at Syracuse University taking a compiler class tought by the distinguished Dr. Per Brinch Hansen, who nominated Peter Naur for this award. (I forgot the exact number, but the ACM committe responsible for selecting the winners, recieved many recommendations for Naur from previous Turning award winners because of his credentials and Hansen's nomination). So congradulations to Naur on his prestigous award, and as the old saying goes "better late than never".
Anders Hejlsberg made Turbo Pascal as well. Also to name a few other Danes that created popular languages like Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP) and David Heinemeier Hansson (Ruby on Rails Framework).
Take the example of John Hennessy. What exactly did he accomplish apart from what his graduate students developed? Yet, through politics, he was able to transform his students' work into his own success. He received the Seymour Cray Engineering Award and was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering.
Returning to ALGOL 60, its syntax has been used as the de-facto standard for describing computer algorithms from 1960 to 1990. ALGOL is inspiration behind Pascal. Further, ALGOL is the first computer language to be designed by actual computer scientists instead of hackers.
I am glad that justice prevailed even though it was belated. Peter earned a prize that was actually well deserved. His ALGOL 60 was key milestone in the development of computer science.
Unfortunately, Gary Kildall did not receive the prize that he deserved while he was alive. William Gates buried him -- figuratively and literally. The Software Publishers Association gave Kildall an award after he died.
It's most likely for that reason Djikstra preferred the term "Computing Science" himself.
Well, in Danish we actually use the term "Datalogi". And danish people I meet seem to known what I'm studying when I say Datalogy. That is, they known it has something to do with computers.
But that's just the recuring problem we as computer scientists meet. Ordinary people think every one working with computers is doing the same work as Joe from the IT dept who helps them connect their Palm handheld.
Google provides the answer: "For inspiration, the first thing I did was go to the supermarket, buy a bag of apples and slice them up. I just stared at the wedges for hours," recalls Janoff. The fruit of his labor: a simple 2-D monochromatic apple, with a healthy bite taken from the right side. Jobs loved the conceit-only he suggested it be more colorful. Janoff's boss disagreed, insisting the logo be made all black to save on printing costs. "But Jobs was resolute, arguing that color was the key to humanizing the company," says Janoff. "So I just put colors where I thought they should be, not even thinking about a prism."
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
In Swedish Computer Science is "datalogi", and the term "informatik" is somewhat loosely translated into "media and information science".