Backus led an IBM team to create FORTRAN, the first widely used and very successful high-level programming language. Fortran, previously FORTRAN, is short for Formula Translator, and is derived from The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System.

Developed in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications, it was released in 1957 and continues to be widely used in such diverse fields as computational physics and chemistry, fluid dynamics, and climate forecasting.

The Backus team at IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) devised a programming language made up of English words and algebraic notation that scientists and engineers were already familiar in performing their work. In the past, in order to program a computer, people had to go to a programming expert in order to input the computer code. With a small amount of training in Fortran, anyone could perform the programming themselves, saving time and effort.

According to Frances Allen, a retired IBM research Fellow: “His [Backus’] contribution was immense, and it influenced the work of many, including me.”

Backus was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. However, his intelligence and aptitude results were so high that the Army had him studying at three universities in such diverse fields as engineering and medicine. Later, he pursued mathematics at Columbia University, in New York City, where he completed his master’s degree in 1949.

He got his first job in 1950 after wandering into an IBM building in New York City after seeing its room-size electronic calculator on display. He was quizzed with some mathematics problems and hired immediately as a computer programmer.

However, frustration soon set in with the difficult way to program a computer. He asked to simply the way computers were programmed. With people adept at problem-solving he began to develop the first structure to programming languages. His team defined and developed Fortran for the IBM 704 computer.

Although not officially the first high-level computer programming language, Fortran is widely considered the first widely used and very successful high-level computer programming language.

Backus also helped to develop ALGOL 58 and ALGOL 60 (ALGOL stands for ALGOrithmic Language), the standard for publishing algorithms. He also was the co-inventor of the Backus-Naur form (BNF), an internationally recognized notation to define formal programming language syntax.

Backus was awarded the W.W. McDowell Award in 1967 for the development of Fortran; the National Medal of Science in 1975, and the ACM Turing Award in 1977. He was named an IBM Fellow in 1987 and awarded a Draper Prize in 1993.

When you see the word Fortran, remember that John Warner Backus and his IBM team invented it over fifty years ago—all before laptops, Windows Vista, computer games, and our other computer gadgets that were made possible in part due to the efforts of Backus.

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