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Kenneth E. Iverson
Computer scientist

Kenneth E. Iverson

Famoose for

Creating APL and its mathematical approach to programming.

A Programming Language · Turing Award

Born
17 December 1920
Birthplace
Camrose
Died
19 October 2004

More people

Ada LovelaceRecognising what a programmable machine could do beyond arithmetic.Alan TuringHelping break Enigma and laying foundations for computer science.Grace HopperHelping make computer programming readable in English-like language.

Kenneth E. Iverson

Kenneth E. Iverson was a Canadian computer scientist who developed APL and later helped create J, treating notation as a tool for thinking.

Early life

Education

Returned to formal education after military service, graduating from Queen’s University before postgraduate study at Harvard.

Career

  1. Academic career

    Harvard

    Taught and developed mathematical notation.

  2. Industry

    IBM

    Worked on APL and interactive computing.

  3. Later work

    Jsoftware

    Helped develop the J language.

Contributions

A Programming Language

Published the notation that gave APL its name.

Turing Award

Received computing’s major award.

Beyond research

Wartime service

Served in the Canadian Army and Royal Canadian Air Force.

Sources & photo creditBiography and career ↗Biographical references ↗Additional biographical source ↗

Original photograph. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.

Photo: Rob Hodgkinson. CC BY-SA 4.0 · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.