Swiss computer pioneer Niklaus Wirth has died
Published: Thursday, Jan 4th 2024, 17:10
Updated At: Thursday, Jan 4th 2024, 17:10
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Swiss computer pioneer Niklaus Wirth is dead. He died on January 1 at the age of 89, as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) confirmed to the Keystone-SDA news agency on Thursday.
"In Niklaus Wirth, ETH Zurich is losing one of its greats, who not only did pioneering work in the development of programming languages, but was also one of the founding fathers of computer science in Switzerland and at ETH," ETH President Joël Mesot was quoted as saying in a press release issued by the university.
Wirth was born in Winterthur on February 15, 1934. From 1968 until his retirement in 1999, he was Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich. According to the university, he played a central role in establishing computer science in Switzerland. He managed to bring computer science innovations from the USA, the leading country in computer development at the time, to Switzerland and to help computer science achieve a breakthrough as a separate field of research and profession in this country.
He designed the Pascal programming language
In 1970, Wirth developed the Pascal programming language. It became one of the most popular teaching languages and influenced the development of other programming languages. Wirth was also involved in the development of programming languages such as Euler, PL360, Algol W, Modula, Modula 2, Oberon and LoLa.
In 1984, he was the first and so far only person from a German-speaking country to receive the Turing Award, one of the highest honors in computer science, for the development of several programming languages.
Switzerland's first personal computer
According to ETH Zurich, he also built the first personal computers (PCs) in Switzerland and trained the first generation of Swiss computer scientists. To this day, his achievements have had a decisive influence on computer science and generations of programmers, according to ETH Zurich.
Wirth also created a law named after him: Wirth's Law. It states that the faster hardware never keeps up with the slower software.
©Keystone/SDA
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