Adriaan van Wijngaarden
Adriaan " Aad " van Wijngaarden ( born November 2, 1916 in Rotterdam, † 7 February 1987 in Amstelveen ) was a Dutch computer scientist. He devoted himself especially to the mathematical aspects of computer application, first in the numerical analysis later in the design of programming languages.
Biography
Van Wijngaarden studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Delft, where he graduated in 1939 as engineer. He began a PhD in hydrodynamics to work, but then let this Subject fall again. In 1945 he went to the national laboratory for aviation and in the following year with a group to England to study, developed during the second world war technology.
The new idea of machine computing attracted van Wijngaarden. On 1 January 1947 he was head of the computer department at the newly founded Mathematisch Centrum (MC ) in Amsterdam. On other trips to England and the USA, he gathered ideas for the construction of the first Dutch computer, the ARRA I ( Automatic relay Rekenmachine Amsterdam) - an electro- mechanical design, which was introduced in 1952 for the first time. In the same year van Wijngaarden Edsger W. Dijkstra hired as an employee, and they were working on software for the ARRA I.
During a visit to Edinburgh in 1958 van Wijngaardens woman was killed in a car accident and he himself severely wounded. After he had recovered, he concentrated more on the study of programming languages and participated in the design of ALGOL. For ALGOL 68, he developed a two-stage type of grammar, which became known as van - Wijngaarden grammar. In 1961 he became head of the Mathematics Centre and stayed for the next twenty years in that position.
Aad, as he was called, was in many ways an original. They knew of him that he 1945 a plausible thesis for the simple reason broke off because it " lacked beauty " her. As a personal signature he used a little @ sign.
Through his work as head of the ALGOL 68 committee van Wijngaarden made a profound, albeit late noticed contribution to the field of design, the definition and the description of programming languages.
In 1958 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Edinburgh ( summation of series ).