This posting will be a break from the usual silliness and semi-seriousness.
John Backus, the creator of the FORTRAN computer programming language, died Saturday, 3/17/07, at the age of 82.
FORTRAN was the first widely-used high-level programming language (i.e. normal people could read & understand the source code), invented in the 1950's by John Backus and his team at IBM, and has been in continuous use ever since. The language is well-suited for scientific and engineering computer applications like computational chemistry or climate modeling, or applications involving complex numbers.
When I was in college I took two or three semesters for FORTRAN. Out in the real world I've mainly used COBOL, but then I've mainly worked in the business world where COBOL is used extensively.
Here's the obituary article at the New York Times. A different (permanent) link to the same article.
