ACM Turing Winner Kenneth Iverson Leaves Programming Legacy
|
|
Computer pioneer Kenneth E. Iverson, who won ACM's prestigious Turing Award
in 1979 for his seminal contributions to computer programming languages, died
October 19th, in Toronto, Canada, at age 83. While at IBM, Iverson invented
APL (which stands for "a programming language"). Designed originally as a
notation for the concise expression of mathematical algorithms, APL was
developed by Iverson into an interactive programming language that was widely
used in academic and commercial applications.
As an assistant professor at Harvard, Iverson developed a mathematical notation
for manipulating arrays in order to simplify the teaching of algebra to his
students. The programming language went unnamed and unimplemented for many
years, known only as "Iverson's language." In 1960, Iverson joined IBM, and
in 1962, with Adin D. Falkoff, he created APL based on the notation he had
developed, which was published in a book titled A Programming Language. This
language challenges conventional algebraic syntax but is compact, simple and
easy to learn. APL is an interactive array-oriented language with many
innovative features. It is written using a non-standard character set and is
dynamically typed with dynamic scope. A hardware version of APL with a keyboard
that has all the necessary characters was built and marketed as well.
Recently, Iverson worked with Jsoftware, Inc., on the J language, which can be
accessed naturally from an ASCII keyboard and display. He saw "J" as a way to
introduce both mathematics and programming. He published several small books
which use "J" in this way.
The citation for Iverson's 1979 Turing Award, known as the Nobel Prize of
computing, cited "his pioneering effort in programming languages and
mathematical notation resulting in what the computing field now knows as APL,
for his contributions to the implementation of interactive systems, to
educational uses of APL, and to programming language theory and
practice."
Iverson grew up on a farm in Alberta, Canada and joined the Royal Canadian Air
Force in World War II. He attended Queen's University in Ontario and earned his
MA and PhD in Applied Mathematics from Harvard, where he helped establish the
first graduate course in Computer Science. In 1980, he joined I. P. Sharp
Associates, a timesharing computer system provider.
In 1991, Iverson was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Technology. He won the
Harry M. Goode Memorial Award in 1975 in recognition of his conception and
development of APL. He was named a Computer Pioneer Charter Recipient by the
IEEE Computer Society in 1981 for his efforts in the creation and continued
viability of the computer industry. Iverson was named an IBM Fellow in
1970.
|
|
