John Backus

John Backus was an American computer scientist who led the development of Fortran and introduced influential ideas in programming-language design, including Backus–Naur form and functional programming.

Fortran: A programming language created at IBM for scientific and engineering computation. Backus led the team that developed this influential early high-level language.
Function-level programming: A programming paradigm that builds programs by composing functions rather than manipulating variables through assignments. Backus’s FP language made this style the central organizing principle.
IBM: An American technology company that became a major producer of business and scientific computers. Backus worked at IBM, where he organized the Fortran project.
Peter Naur: A Danish computer scientist who edited the influential ALGOL 60 report and advanced compiler theory. Naur’s work helped establish the syntax notation associated with Backus’s name.
Backus–Naur form: A notation for describing the syntax of programming languages and other formal languages. Backus helped introduce this notation to specify the syntax of ALGOL 58.
Function composition: An operation that combines functions so the output of one becomes the input of another. FP uses composition to assemble larger computations from smaller functions.
Fortran project: The IBM effort, begun in 1954, to develop a practical optimizing compiler and programming language. Backus led the team that turned this project into Fortran.
Heinz Rutishauser: A Swiss mathematician and computer scientist who contributed to early programming-language design and numerical computing. His work on early language notation and ALGOL connects to the design context around Backus.
FP (programming language): A functional programming language designed by John Backus around function composition and higher-order operations. Backus presented FP as an alternative to conventional, assignment-centered programming.
Referential transparency: A property in which an expression can be replaced by its value without changing program behavior. Backus argued that functional programs gain clarity by avoiding mutable state.

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