Danish professor wins prestigious Turing Award for computing

(2006.02.28)

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), has named Professor Emeritus Peter Naur at the University of Copenhagen, the winner of the 2005 Turing Award, considered the "Nobel Prize of Computing"

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), has named Professor Emeritus Peter Naur at the University of Copenhagen, the winner of the 2005 Turing Award, considered the "Nobel Prize of Computing." The Turing Award, which is named after British mathematician Alan Turing, carries a USD 100,000 prize and is sponsored by Intel Corporation. The award will be presented on 20 May in San Francisco.

Peter Naur is the first Dane to receive the Turing Award. The award committee's citation states that he has won the prize for fundamental contributions to the design of programming language, the definition of Algol 60, and for creative and practical work with programming.

In 1969, Peter Naur became the first professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen. In the 1950s, together with John Backus, he described the computer language of the future, Algol 60, which formed the basis of object oriented computer languages such as Java. Peter Naur and John Backus are known by programmers throughout the world via their Backus Naur Formula, which is used to describe new programming languages.

The news was reported by Computerworld and on the University of Copenhagen's website.

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last updated: 2006.02.27