This page was sent to you by: paul.hudak@yale.edu. John Backus, inventor of Fortran, Turing Award winner, and also an early pioneer in functional programming, died Saturday at his home in Oregon. Many of us have fond memories of him in the earlier days of our careers, and we all owe a lot to him for giving credibility to functional programming through his Turing Award lecture, "Can Programming Be Libarated From the von Neumann style?" Here is an article from the New York Times. BUSINESS | March 20, 2007 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies By STEVE LOHR Mr. Backus assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/business/20backus.html?ex=1175054400&en=d76ca10764a7769f&ei=5070&emc=eta1 ---------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT THIS E-MAIL This e-mail was sent to you by a friend through NYTimes.com's E-mail This Article service. For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@nytimes.com. NYTimes.com 500 Seventh Avenue New York, NY 10018 Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company