

COBOL was an extension of Hopper’s FLOW-MATIC language. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I calculator, and she developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Naval officer. Hejlsberg recently became a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and Technical Fellow. He also developed the J++ programming language and Windows Foundation Classes. He invented C++ in 1979 (then called “C with Classes”) and wrote what many consider to be the the C++ bible, The C++ Programming Language.Īnders Hejlsberg is a prominent Danish software engineer who currently works for Microsoft as the lead architect of the C# programming language. Ritchie was head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007.ījarne Stroustrup is a Danish computer scientist and the Chair Professor of Computer Science at Texas A&M University. Ritchie also co-developed the Unix operating system, received the Turing Award in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology in 1998. Ritchie is co-author of the definitive book on C, The C Programming Language (also known as K&R in reference to the authors Kernighan and Ritchie).

In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.ĭennis Ritchie is an American computer scientist who invented the C programming language in 1972 for Bell Telephone Labs. Kurtz is an American computer scientist who was Professor of Mathematics and Director of Computer and Information Systems at Dartmouth. He served as President of Dartmouth College 1970–1981 and chaired the presidential commission that investigated the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.

Kemeny was a Hungarian-American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz designed the original BASIC programming language in 1964 at Dartmouth University to provide computer access to non-science students. Inspired by AngelFire’s gallery of photos for programming language inventors, here is a brief biography of the inventors of major programming languages still in use today:
