Niklaus Wirth of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology {ETH] waspresented the 1984 ACM A. M. Ihring Award at the Association’s Annual Conference in San Francisco in October in recognition of his outstanding work in developing a sequence of innovative computer languages: Euler’ ALGOL-W, Modula, and Pascal. Pascal, in particular, has become significant pedagogically and has established a foundation for future research in the areas of computer language, systems, and architecture. The hallmarks of a Wirth language are its simplicity, economy of design, and high-quality engineering, which result in a language whose notation appears to be a natural extension of algorithmic thinking rather than an extraneous formalism.

Wirth’s ability in language design is complemented by a masterful writing ability. In the April 1971 issue of Communications of the ACM, Wirth published a seminal paper on Structured Programming {”Program Develop- ment by Stepwise Refinement”] that recommended top-down structuring of programs {i.e., successively refining program stubs until the program is fully elaborated]. The resulting elegant and powerful method of exposition remains interesting reading today even after the furor over Structured Programming has subsided. 1lvo later papers, “Toward a Discipline of Real-Time Programming” and “What Can We Do About the Unnecessary Diversity of Notation” {published in CACM in August and November 1974, respectively], speak to Wirth’s consistent and dedicated search for an adequate language formalism.

The Taring Award, the Association’s highest recognition of technical contributions to the computing community, honors Alan M. Taring, the English mathematician who defined the computer prototype Taring machine and helped break German ciphers during World War II.

Wirth received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1963 and was Assistant Professor at Stanford University until 1967. He has been Professor at the ETH Zurich since 1968; from 1982 until 1984 he was Chairman of the Division of Computer Science {Informatik] at ETH. Wirth’s recent work includes the design and development of the personal computer Lilith in conjunction with the Modula-2 language. In his lecture, Wirth presents a short history of his major projects, drawing conclusions and highlighting the principles that have guided his work.

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