Kenneth E. Iverson
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Kenneth Eugene Iverson (17 December, 1920, Camrose, Alberta/Canada –October 19, 2004,Toronto, Ontario/Canada) was a computer scientist most notable for developing the APL programming language. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 for his contributions to mathematical notation and programming language theory.
The Iverson Award for contributions to APL was named in his honor.
He received his Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Physics in 1951 from Queen's University, Kingston in Canada. At Harvard University, he received his Master's degree in 1951 in Mathematics and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 1954.
As an assistant professor at Harvard, Iverson developed a mathematical notation for manipulating arrays that he taught to his students. In 1962, he began work for IBM and working with Adin Falkoff, created APL based on the notation he had developed. He was named an IBM Fellow in 1970.
He later developed the J programming language,
Books
- A Programming Language (1962)
- Automatic Data Processing (with Frederick Brooks) (1963)
- Elementary Functions: an algorithmic treatment (Science Research Associates, Inc.) (1966)
- A Source Book In APL (with Adin D. Falkoff) (APL Press) (1981)
- Tangible Math (Iverson Software Inc.) (1990)
- The ISI Dictionary of J (Iverson Software Inc.) (1991)
External links
- Kenneth E. Iverson (http://www.sigmod.org/sigmod/dblp/db/indices/a-tree/i/Iverson:Kenneth_E=.html): This page at the Digital Bibliography and Library Project lists Kenneth Iverson's publications.
- Short Biography (http://www.science.ca/scientists/scientistprofile.php?pID=178) at the science.ca website
- Ehud Lamm's obituary (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/view/334/2575) at Lambda the Ultimate
- A Personal View of APL (http://elliscave.com/APL_J/IversonAPL.htm)
- Remembering Kenneth E. Iverson (http://www.vector.org.uk/index.php?area=kei&page=front) A set of anecdotes and accounts published in Vector (http://www.vector.org.uk/), the Journal of the British APL Association (http://www.bcs.org/BCS/Groups/SpecialistGroups/AtoB/BritishAPLAssoc/)
- A Celebration of the life of Kenneth Eugene Iverson (http://keiapl.info/)de:Kenneth E. Iverson