death_date death_place work_institution birth_place image_size field birth_date known_for article_title name alma_mater
17 march 2007 ashland , oregon ibm philadelphia , pennsylvania 100px computer science 3 december 1924 speedcoding john backus
 john backus columbia university -lrb- m.s. , 1950 -rrb-
john backus

john warner backus -lrb- december 3 , 1924 -- march 17 , 2007 -rrb- was an american computer scientist .
he directed the team that invented the first widely used high-level programming language -lrb- fortran -rrb- and was the inventor of the backus-naur form -lrb- bnf -rrb- , a widely used notation to define formal language syntax .
he also did research in function-level programming and helped to popularize it .
the ieee awarded backus the w.w. mcdowell award in 1967 for the development of fortran .
he received the national medal of science in 1975 , and the 1977 acm turing award `` for profound , influential , and lasting contributions to the design of practical high-level programming systems , notably through his work on fortran , and for publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages . ''
