Peter Naur
| Peter Naur | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
25 October 1928 Frederiksberg, Denmark |
| Died | 3 January 2016 (aged 87) Herlev, Denmark |
| Nationality | Danish |
| Fields | Computer science, Informatics |
| Institutions |
Regnecentralen Niels Bohr Institute Technical University of Denmark University of Copenhagen |
| Known for |
ALGOL, Backus–Naur form |
| Notable awards |
Computer Pioneer Award (1986) Turing award (2005) |
Peter Naur (25 October 1928 – 3 January 2016) was a Danish computer science pioneer and Turing award winner. His last name is the "N" in the BNF notation (Backus–Naur form), used in the description of the syntax for most programming languages. He contributed to the creation of the ALGOL 60 programming language.
He began his career as an astronomer for which he received his PhD degree in 1957, but his encounter with computers led to a change of profession. From 1959 to 1969, he was employed at Regnecentralen, the Danish computing company, while at the same time giving lectures at the Niels Bohr Institute and the Technical University of Denmark. From 1969 to 1998 Naur was a professor of computer science at University of Copenhagen.
His main areas of inquiry were design, structure and performance of computer programs and algorithms. Areas such as software engineering and software architecture have also been pioneered by Naur. In his book Computing: A Human Activity (1992), which is a collection of his contributions to computer science, he rejected the formalist school of programming that views programming as a branch of mathematics. He did not like being associated with the Backus–Naur form (attributed to him by Donald Knuth) and said that he would prefer it to be called the Backus normal form.
Naur was married to computer scientist Christiane Floyd.
Naur disliked the very term "computer science" and suggested it be called "datalogy" or "data science". The former term has been adopted in Denmark and in Sweden as datalogi, while the latter term is now used for data analysis (including statistics and databases).
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