Niklaus Emil Wirth ( IPA: ) (15 February 1934 – 1 January 2024) was a Swiss

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 ...

. He designed several

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 ...

s, including Pascal, and pioneered several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984, he won the

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the fi ...

, generally recognized as the highest distinction in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

, "for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages".

Early life and education

Niklaus Emil Wirth was born in

Winterthur Winterthur (; ) is a city in the canton of Zurich in northern Switzerland. With over 120,000 residents, it is the country's List of cities in Switzerland, sixth-largest city by population, as well as its ninth-largest agglomeration with about 14 ...

, Switzerland, on 15 February 1934. He was the son of Hedwig (née Keller) and Walter Wirth, a high school teacher. Wirth studied

electronic engineering Electronic engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering that emerged in the early 20th century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices to amplify and control electric current flo ...

at the Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich (ETH Zürich) from 1954 to 1958, graduating with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree. In 1960, he earned a Master of Science (M.Sc.) from

Université Laval (; English: ''Laval University)'' is a public research university in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The university traces its roots to the Séminaire de Québec, founded by François de Montmorency-Laval in 1663, making it the oldest institutio ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

. Then in 1963, he was awarded a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, supervised by computer design pioneer Harry Huskey.

Career

From 1963 to 1967, Wirth served as assistant professor of

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and again at the

University of Zürich The University of Zurich (UZH, ) is a public university, public research university in Zurich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of the ...

. In 1968, he became a professor of

informatics Informatics is the study of computational systems. According to the Association for Computing Machinery, ACM Europe Council and Informatics Europe, informatics is synonymous with computer science and computing as a profession, in which the centra ...

at ETH Zürich, taking two one-year sabbaticals at Xerox PARC in California (1976–1977 and 1984–1985). He retired in 1999. Although Wirth was involved with developing

international standard An international standard is a technical standard developed by one or more international standards organizations. International standards are available for consideration and use worldwide. The most prominent such organization is the International O ...

s in programming and informatics, as a member of the

International Federation for Information Processing The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) is a global organisation for researchers and professionals working in the field of computing to conduct research, develop standards and promote information sharing. Established in 19 ...

(IFIP) Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi, which specified, maintains, and supports the

ALGOL 60 ALGOL 60 (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1960'') is a member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages. It followed on from ALGOL 58 which had introduced code blocks and the begin and end pairs for delimiting them, representing a ...

and

ALGOL 68 ALGOL 68 (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1968'') is an imperative programming language member of the ALGOL family that was conceived as a successor to the ALGOL 60 language, designed with the goal of a much wider scope of application and ...

, he got frustrated by the discussions in the standards groups and published his languages later on as personal work, mainly Pascal,

Modula-2 Modula-2 is a structured, procedural programming language developed between 1977 and 1985/8 by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich. It was created as the language for the operating system and application software of the Lilith personal workstation. It w ...

and

Oberon Oberon () is a king of the fairy, fairies in Middle Ages, medieval and Renaissance literature. He is best known as a character in William Shakespeare's play ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', in which he is King of the Fairies and spouse of Titania ...

. In 2004, he was made a Fellow of the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a computer museum in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the Information Age, and explores the Digital Revolution, computing revolution and its impact ...

"for seminal work in programming languages and algorithms, including Euler, Algol-W, Pascal, Modula, and Oberon."

Programming languages

Wirth was the chief designer of the programming languages

Euler Leonhard Euler ( ; ; ; 15 April 170718 September 1783) was a Swiss polymath who was active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, logician, geographer, and engineer. He founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made influential ...

(1965), PL360 (1966),

ALGOL W ALGOL W is a programming language. It is based on a proposal for ALGOL X by Niklaus Wirth and Tony Hoare as a successor to ALGOL 60. ALGOL W is a relatively simple upgrade of the original ALGOL 60, adding string, bitstring, complex number a ...

(1966), Pascal (1970),

Modula The Modula programming language is a descendant of the Pascal language. It was developed in Switzerland, at ETH Zurich, in the mid-1970s by Niklaus Wirth, the same person who designed Pascal. The main innovation of Modula over Pascal is a mo ...

(1975), Modula-2 (1978), Oberon (1987), Oberon-2 (1991), and Oberon-07 (2007). He was also a major part of the design and implementation team for the operating systems Medos-2 (1983, for the

Lilith Lilith (; ), also spelled Lilit, Lilitu, or Lilis, is a feminine figure in Mesopotamian and Jewish mythology, theorized to be the first wife of Adam and a primordial she-demon. Lilith is cited as having been "banished" from the Garden of Eden ...

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or computational science, scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating syste ...

), and

(1987, for the Ceres workstation), and for the Lola (1995)

digital hardware Digital electronics is a field of electronics involving the study of digital signals and the engineering of devices that use or produce them. It deals with the relationship between binary inputs and outputs by passing electrical signals through ...

design and simulation system. In 1984, Wirth received the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

(ACM)

for the development of these languages. In 1994, he was inducted as a Fellow of the ACM. In 1999, he received the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award

Wirth's law

In 1995, he popularized the adage now named Wirth's law. In his 1995 paper "A Plea for Lean Software" he attributed the following to Martin Reiser phrasing it as, "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."

Publications

The April 1971

Communications of the ACM ''Communications of the ACM'' (''CACM'') is the monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). History It was established in 1958, with Saul Rosen as its first managing editor. It is sent to all ACM members. Articles are i ...

article "Program Development by Stepwise Refinement", concerning the teaching of programming, is considered to be a classic text in software engineering. The paper is considered to be the earliest work to formally outline the top-down method for designing programs. The article was discussed by

Fred Brooks Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. (April 19, 1931 – November 17, 2022) was an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing development of IBM's System/360 family of mainframe computers and the ...

in his influential book ''

The Mythical Man-Month ''The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering'' is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks first published in 1975, with subsequent editions in 1982 and 1995. Its central theme is that adding manpower to a s ...

'' and was described as "seminal" in the ACM's brief biography of Wirth published in connection to his Turing Award. The 1973 textbook, ''Systematic Programming: An Introduction'', was described as a quality source for mathematicians desiring to understand the nature of programming in a 1974 review. The cover flap, of the 1973 edition, stated the book "... is tailored to the needs of people who view a course on systematic construction of algorithms as part of their basic mathematical training, rather than to the immediate needs of those who wish to be able to occasionally encode a problem and hand it over to their computer for instant solution." Described in the review as a challenging text to work through, it was nevertheless recommended as useful reading for those interested in numerical mathematics. In 1974, ''The Pascal User Manual and Report'', jointly written with Kathleen Jensen, served as the basis of many language implementation efforts in the 1970s (

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

Pascal), and 1980s in the United States and across Europe. In 1975, he wrote the book '' Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs'', which gained wide recognition. Major revisions of this book with the new title ''Algorithms & Data Structures'' were published in 1986 and 2004. The examples in the first edition were written in Pascal. These were replaced in the later editions with examples written in Modula-2 and Oberon, respectively. In 1992, Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht published the full documentation of the Oberon operating system. Out of print
Online version of a 2nd edition

2005 edition, PDF.
A second book, with Martin Reiser, was intended as a programming guide.. Out of print.

Death

Wirth died in Zürich on New Year's Day 2024, at age 89.

Notes

References

External links

* , ETH Zürich
Biography
at

ETH Zürich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ra ...

*
Niklaus E. Wirth
at ACM
Turing Award Lecture, 1984

Pascal and its Successors
paper by Niklaus Wirth – also includes short biography.

*
The School of Niklaus Wirth: The Art of Simplicity
', by László Böszörményi, Jürg Gutknecht, Gustav Pomberger (editors). dpunkt.verlag; Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2000. , . * The boo
Compiler Construction
* The boo
Algorithms and Data Structures
* The boo
Project Oberon – The Design of an Operating System and Compiler
The book about the Oberon language and Operating System is now available as a PDF file. The PDF file has an additional appendix ''Ten Years After: From Objects to Components''.

Online 2nd Edition of the preceding book adapted for the reimplementation on FPGA hardware. {{DEFAULTSORT:Wirth, Niklaus E. 1934 births 2024 deaths ETH Zurich alumni Academic staff of ETH Zurich Swiss electronics engineers 1994 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Formal methods people Pascal (programming language) Programming language designers Programming language researchers Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Swiss computer scientists Turing Award laureates Université Laval alumni People from Winterthur Computer science educators Scientists at PARC (company) UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Members of Academia Europaea Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences