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Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Emil Wirth (IPA: /vɛrt/) (15 February 1934 – 1 January 2024) was a Swiss computer scientist. He designed several programming languages, including Pascal, and pioneered several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984, he won the Turing Award, generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science, "for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages".
Niklaus Emil Wirth was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, on 15 February 1934. He was the son of Hedwig (née Keller) and Walter Wirth, a high school teacher. Wirth studied electronic engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich (ETH Zürich) from 1954 to 1958, graduating with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree. In 1960, he earned a Master of Science (M.Sc.) from Université Laval in Quebec. Then in 1963, he was awarded a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) from the University of California, Berkeley, supervised by computer design pioneer Harry Huskey.
From 1963 to 1967, Wirth served as assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University and again at the University of Zürich. In 1968, he became a professor of informatics at ETH Zürich, taking two one-year sabbaticals at Xerox PARC in California (1976–1977 and 1984–1985). He retired in 1999.
Although Wirth was involved with developing international standards in programming and informatics, as a member of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi, which specified, maintains, and supports the programming languages ALGOL 60 and ALGOL 68, he got frustrated by the discussions in the standards groups and published his languages later on as personal work, mainly Pascal, Modula-2 and Oberon.
In 2004, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for seminal work in programming languages and algorithms, including Euler, Algol-W, Pascal, Modula, and Oberon."
Wirth was the chief designer of the programming languages Euler (1965), PL360 (1966), ALGOL W (1966), Pascal (1970), Modula (1975), Modula-2 (1978), Oberon (1987), Oberon-2 (1991), and Oberon-07 (2007). He was also a major part of the design and implementation team for the operating systems Medos-2 (1983, for the Lilith workstation), and Oberon (1987, for the Ceres workstation), and for the Lola (1995) digital hardware design and simulation system.
In 1984, Wirth received the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Turing Award for the development of these languages. In 1994, he was inducted as a Fellow of the ACM.
In 1999, he received the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award
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Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Emil Wirth (IPA: /vɛrt/) (15 February 1934 – 1 January 2024) was a Swiss computer scientist. He designed several programming languages, including Pascal, and pioneered several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984, he won the Turing Award, generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science, "for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages".
Niklaus Emil Wirth was born in Winterthur, Switzerland, on 15 February 1934. He was the son of Hedwig (née Keller) and Walter Wirth, a high school teacher. Wirth studied electronic engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich (ETH Zürich) from 1954 to 1958, graduating with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree. In 1960, he earned a Master of Science (M.Sc.) from Université Laval in Quebec. Then in 1963, he was awarded a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) from the University of California, Berkeley, supervised by computer design pioneer Harry Huskey.
From 1963 to 1967, Wirth served as assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University and again at the University of Zürich. In 1968, he became a professor of informatics at ETH Zürich, taking two one-year sabbaticals at Xerox PARC in California (1976–1977 and 1984–1985). He retired in 1999.
Although Wirth was involved with developing international standards in programming and informatics, as a member of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi, which specified, maintains, and supports the programming languages ALGOL 60 and ALGOL 68, he got frustrated by the discussions in the standards groups and published his languages later on as personal work, mainly Pascal, Modula-2 and Oberon.
In 2004, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for seminal work in programming languages and algorithms, including Euler, Algol-W, Pascal, Modula, and Oberon."
Wirth was the chief designer of the programming languages Euler (1965), PL360 (1966), ALGOL W (1966), Pascal (1970), Modula (1975), Modula-2 (1978), Oberon (1987), Oberon-2 (1991), and Oberon-07 (2007). He was also a major part of the design and implementation team for the operating systems Medos-2 (1983, for the Lilith workstation), and Oberon (1987, for the Ceres workstation), and for the Lola (1995) digital hardware design and simulation system.
In 1984, Wirth received the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Turing Award for the development of these languages. In 1994, he was inducted as a Fellow of the ACM.
In 1999, he received the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award