Contents
Niklaus Wirth
Creating Pascal and influential approaches to structured programming.
Pascal · Modula-2
- Born
- 15 February 1934
- Birthplace
- Winterthur, Switzerland
- Died
- 1 January 2024
More people
Niklaus Wirth
Niklaus Wirth was a Swiss computer scientist who designed programming languages including Pascal, Modula-2 and Oberon. He received the 1984 Turing Award.
Early life
Swiss upbringing
Grew up in Winterthur, the son of a schoolteacher.
Engineering studies
Studied at ETH Zurich and Laval before completing his Berkeley doctorate in 1963.
Career
- 1963–1967
Early academic posts
Taught at Stanford and the University of Zurich.
- 1968–1999
ETH Zurich
Developed languages and computer systems as a professor of informatics.
- 2000s–2010s
Continued design work
Kept refining programming and hardware projects after retirement.
Contributions
Pascal
Designed a language that became widely used to teach structured programming.
Modula-2
Extended his approach with support for modular software construction.
Oberon
Developed a compact language and associated operating system.
Beyond work
Lean software
Argued that software complexity could consume gains in computer speed.
Sharing knowledge
Made teaching texts and system documentation available to programmers.
Sources & photo credit
Life, career and references ↗Institutional source ↗Photo: Zvezdica2816. CC BY-SA 3.0 · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
