Peter Naur

Peter Naur (born October 25, 1928, Frederiksberg, Denmark—died January 3, 2016, Herlev) was a Danish astronomer and computer scientist and winner of the 2005 A.M. Turing Award, the highest honour in computer science, for “fundamental contributions to programming language design and the definition of Algol 60, to compiler design, and to the art and practice of computer programming.”

In 1949 Naur earned a master’s degree in astronomy from the University of Copenhagen; he continued his studies in England at the University of Cambridge (1950–51), where he worked with the EDSAC computer on astronomical calculations of the orbits of comets and asteroids, and conducted further computer-assisted research in the United States. Naur then returned to Denmark and served as a scientific assistant at the University of Copenhagen’s astronomical observatory (1953–59) while he earned a doctorate (1957) in astronomy at the university. From 1959 to 1969 Naur served on the staff of the compiler design group at Regnecentralen, the first Danish computer company, and taught courses at the Technical University of Denmark and the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. At Regnecentralen he organized the Algol Bulletin and was editor of the 1960 report by an international group of computer scientists that defined Algol 60. In 1969 Naur became a professor at the Institute of Datalogy, University of Copenhagen, from which he retired in 1998.

Naur is the author of Computing: A Human Activity (1992) and Anti-philosophical Dictionary (1999). In addition to the Turing Award, Naur received the 1963 G.A. Hagemann Gold Medal from the Technical University of Denmark, the 1966 Jens Rosenkjaer Prize from the Danish Radio, and the 1986 Computer Pioneer Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

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