John Backus
1924 
Philadelphia [USA]
† 2007
John Backus is the father of FORTRAN (an acronym for FORmula TRANslator), the first high-level programming language that had a major commercial impact.
He developed it at IBM with the intention of making it easier to program its calculators with a language more similar to the language of mathematics.
Contemporary computing celebrities to John Backus
-
Ralph Baer
1922
Rodalben [Germany]
† 2014
Ralph Baer is popularly known as "the father of video games."
Born in Germany, his Jewish family moved to the United States fleeing the Holocaust when he was 16, where he would pursue his career. -
Douglas Engelbart
1925
Portland [USA]
† 2013
He is considered the father of the mouse, among many other contributions to modern computing.
-
Seymour Cray
1925
Chippewa Falls [USA]
† 1996
Cray is known as the father of supercomputers because he designed a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades.
-
Ray Kassar
1928
New York [USA]
† 2017
Ray Kassar was an American businessman, Chairman and CEO of Atari from 1978 to 1983.
-
Jack Tramiel
1928
Lodz [Poland]
† 2012
Polish-born American businessman, famous for founding Commodore International and later serving as CEO of Atari Corp.
-
Gordon Moore
1929
San Francisco [USA]
† 2023
He was an American engineer and physicist, co-founder of Intel and author of Moore's Law.
