Niklaus Wirth has become nothing less than a legend in his own time and
an icon in the history of the microcomputer Though usually cited with the
creation of Pascal and as the butt of many Niklaus Wirth Jokes, he is
much more than that.
He was born February 15, 1934 in Winterhur, Switzerland, the son of
Walter and Hedwig Wirth. His education in Electrical Engineering began
with his degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1958,
his M.Sc. from Canada's University Laval in 1960 and then his Ph.D. from
U.C. Berkeley in 1963.
Later he became an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford
University from 1963 through 1967 and then moved back to Zurich to be Professor
of Informatics at ETH Zurich. He stayed in that position (barring a 2 year
vacation to Xerox PARC) until his retirement in 1999.
He has received Honors including the A. M. Turing Award (1984), IEEE
Computer Society, Computer Pioneer Award (1988), IBM Europe Science
and Technology Prize 1988 1989), Member, Swiss Academy of Engineering (1992),
US Academy of Engineering (1994), Orden Pour le merite (1996), ACM
SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award in Software Engineering (1999), Leonardo
da Vinci Medal from Societe Europeenne pour la Formation des Ingenieurs
(SEFI) (1999). His Honorary Doctorates include: University of York, England
(1978), Ecole Polytechnique Federale, Lausanne, Switzerland (1978), Laval
University, Quebec, Canada (1987), Johannes Kepler Universitaet Linz,
Austria (1993), University of Novosibirsk, Russia (1996), The Open University,
England (1997), University of Pretoria, South Africa (1998), Masaryk University,
Brno, Czech Republic (1999)..
In his most noted field, computer languages, Prof. Wirth has credit for:
Euler, Algol-w, Pascal(-P), Modula(-2) and Oberon, as well bit
parts in a handful of others.
It's also important to address the pronunciation of his name. Although,
in the western world, we would pronouce his name along the lines of
N-ik'a'lus W-e-rth
..because of his country of origin (
Switzerland), it is really pronounced
like (and
he pronounces it as)
N-i-kl'us V-ir't
Just thought you'd all like to know. Sadly, pronouncing it this way causes
a bunch of
jokes to not be as
funny.
this writeup is in direct retailiation for an unfair deletion. I know who you are. Do not do it again.