Brad J. Cox (May 2, 1944 – January 2, 2021) was an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

who was known mostly for creating the

Objective-C Objective-C is a high-level general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style message passing (messaging) to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

with his business partner Tom Love and for his work in

software engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...

(specifically software reuse) and software componentry.

Biography

Cox received his Bachelor of Science Degree in

Organic Chemistry Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the science, scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic matter, organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain ...

and Mathematics from Furman University, and his Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematical Biology at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

. Among his first known software projects, he wrote a PDP-8 program for simulating clusters of neurons. He worked at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute before moving into the software profession. Although Cox invented his own programming language,

, which he used in his early career, he stated in an interview for the ''Masterminds of Programming'' book that he wasn't interested in

s but rather in software components, and he regarded languages as mere tools for building and combining parts of software. Stepstone-firehousefactory

Cox was also an entrepreneur, having founded the Stepstone company together with Tom Love, established to release the first Objective-C implementation. Stepstone folded in 1994 and in April 1995, NeXT acquired the Objective-C trademark and rights from Stepstone. At the same time, Stepstone licensed back from NeXT the right to continue selling their Objective-C based products. As Apple Computer acquired NeXT a year later, they now hold the rights to Objective-C. Stepstone appears to have gone out of business in the early 2000s.

Awards

* Online course "Taming the Electronic Frontier" won a Paul Allen Distance Education Award ($25,000) in 1998.

Notes

Books

* *

External links

Belaboring the Obvious
His personal blog
VirtualSchool.edu (archived 2017)
A website for hosting his miscellaneous works * 1944 births 2021 deaths Furman University alumni Programming language designers American software engineers University of Chicago alumni {{compu-scientist-stub