The world of computer science mourns the loss of an important computing pioneer: the Swiss Niklaus Wirth, inventor of several programming languages and one of the founders of the Logitech Group, died on January 1. He was 89.
Wirth’s successor Bertrand Meyer from the chair of Software Development at the renowned ETH Zurich delivered the sad news via Twitter.
Winner of the first German-language Turing Prize
Wirth was one of the great pioneers in the field of computer science. Programming languages he invented, such as Pascal, are known to generations of programmers. In 1984, Wirth was the first German-speaking computer scientist to receive the Turing Prize, and in 1988 he was honored with the Computer Pioneer Award from the international engineering association IEEE.
Wirth laid the foundation for his success in the 1960s. He did pioneering work in the development of programming languages. He contributed to the creation of an extended version of the Algol programming language, but Wirth’s best-known programming language is probably Pascal. It became the basis for many other programming languages and was used worldwide, especially in the training of programmers. Niklaus Wirth has written several standard works in the field of computer science education.
Wirth brought computer mice to Europe
In parallel with his academic work, Niklaus Wirth was involved in industry and, among other things, shaped the way we operate our computers today. As co-founder of the technology company Logitech, he brought the first computer mice to Europe. His technical expertise and entrepreneurial vision have made Logitech a leader in the computer peripheral industry.
Wirth was a much sought-after speaker in the IT world until he was very old. Just a few years ago he was in Austria, where he appeared at an event organized by the Austrian computer association OCG. During this visit, he also gave krone.at a detailed interview in which he shared his opinion on current developments in computer science, such as voice control and artificial intelligence. You can find it here to continue reading.
Source: Krone
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