List of programming language researchers

A

• Martín Abadi, for the programming language Baby Modula-3 and his book A Theory of Objects
• Samson Abramsky, contributions to the areas of the lazy lambda calculus and concurrency theory and co-editing the 6 Volume Handbook of Logic in Computer Science
• Jean-Raymond Abrial, father of the Z notation and the B-Method, targeted at the clear specification and refinement of computer programs and computer-based systems in general
• Vikram Adve, the 2012 ACM Software System Award for LLVM, a set of compiler and toolchain technologies
• Gul Agha, elected as an ACM Fellow in 2018 for research in concurrent programming and formal methods, specifically the Actor Model
• Alfred Aho, the A of AWK, 2020 Turing Award for fundamental algorithms and theory underlying programming language implementation and for synthesizing these results...highly influential books...
• Frances Allen, the 2006 Turing Award for pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques...
• Andrew Appel, especially well known because of his compiler books, the Modern Compiler Implementation in ML series, as well as Compiling With Continuations
• Krzysztof R. Apt, the use of logic as a programming language
• Bruce Arden, co-authored two compilers, GAT for the IBM 650 and MAD
• Arvind, see [|Arvind Mithal]
• Lennart Augustsson, languages, compilers

  B

• Ralph-Johan Back, originated the refinement calculus, used in the formal development of programs using stepwise refinement
• Roland Backhouse, work on the mathematics of program construction and algorithm problem solving; books on Syntax of Programming Languages, Program Construction and Verification, and more
• John Backus, the 1977 Turing Award for profound, influential, and lasting contributions to the design of practical high-level programming systems, notably through his work on FORTRAN, and for seminal publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages
• George N. Baird, the 1974 Grace Murray Hopper Award for his \development and implementation of the Navy's COBOL Compiler Validation System
• Lars Bak, the 2018 AITO Dahl–Nygaard Prize for pioneering work in pointer-safe object-orientation and leading the implementation of Beta, Self, Strongtalk, Java Hotspot,..., the ACM SIGPLAN 2016 PL Software Award for V8 JavaScript
• Henri Bal, programming languages for distributed systems, e.g. Orca
• Friedrich L. Bauer, proposed the stack method of expression evaluation, member of the ALGOL 60 Committee, see also
• Kent Beck, a leading proponent of test-driven development, pioneered software design patterns, and co-wrote JUnit for Java
• Jeff Bezanson, the 2019 J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software for the co-development of the Julia language
• Dines Bjørner, the Vienna Development Method, the Raise specification language
• Daniel Bobrow, 1992 ACM Software System Award for the IDE named Interlisp
• Corrado Böhm, defined Böhm's language, the first meta-circular evaluator, contributed the structured program theorem
• Grady Booch, developer of Unified Modeling Language
• Kathleen Booth, designed and developed first assembly language
• Stephen R. Bourne, developed ALGOL 68C, member IFIP Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi
• Gilad Bracha, the 2017 AITO Dahl–Nygaard Prize for outstanding work on many topics relevant to OO, including mixins, Java generics, Strongtalk, and Newspeak
• Larry Breed, 1973 Grace Murray Hopper Award for designing and implementing APL\360
• Walter Bright, designer of D
• Per Brinch Hansen, the IEEE Computer Society 2002 Computer Pioneer Award for... Concurrent Pascal
• Kim Bruce, the 2021 AITO Dahl–Nygaard Prize for... programming language theory and design in general and object orientation specifically
• Margaret Burnett, pioneering contributions to visual programming languages
• Rod Burstall, languages COWSEL, POP-2, NPL, Hope; ACM SIGPLAN 2009 PL Achievement Award
• Richard Burton, the 1992 ACM Software System Award for the IDE called Interlisp

  C

• Luca Cardelli, research in type theory and operational semantics, helped develop Modula-3 and Polyphonic C#, first compiler for ML, the 2007 AITO Dahl–Nygaard Prize,
• Craig Chambers, the 2011 AITO Dahl–Nygaard Prize for the design of Cecil and his work on compiler techniques used to implement OO languages...
• John Chambers, the 1998 ACM Software System Award for the programing language S
• K. Mani Chandy, contributions to the verification of parallel programming languages, including the language UNITY
• Alonzo Church, the Lambda calculus; considered a founder of computer science
• John Cocke, the 1987 Turing Award for significant contributions in the design and theory of compilers,..., and...; co-developed the CYK parsing algorithm
• Alain Colmerauer, creator of Prolog
• Richard W. Conway, for the introductory languages CORC and CUPL and the student-oriented dialect PL/C; for extensive error correction so that every program compiled
• William Cook, chief architect of AppleScript, the 2014 AITO Dahl–Nygaard Prize for contributions to the theory and practice of OO programming
• Keith Cooper, research on programming languages, compilers, optimization, and static analysis
• Thierry Coquand, ACM SIGPLAN 2013 PL Software Award, and 2015 ACM Software System Award for Coq proof assistant
• Patrick Cousot, for contributions to programming languages through the co-invention of abstract interpretation, ACM SIGPLAN 2013 PL Achievement Award
• Radhia Cousot, for contributions to programming languages through the co-invention of abstract interpretation, ACM SIGPLAN 2013 PL Achievement Award
• James Cordy, known for the TXL source transformation language, a parser-based framework and functional programming language designed to support software analysis and transformation tasks

  D

• Ole-Johan Dahl, the 2001 Turing Award for ideas fundamental to the emergence of OO programming, through design of the programming languages Simula I and 67
• Olivier Danvy specializes in programming languages, partial evaluation, and continuations
• John Darlington, work on program transformation and functional programming, including NPL and Hope+
• L. Peter Deutsch, first implementation of TRAC, first REPL, PhD thesis on an interactive program verifier, the 1992 ACM Software System Award for the IDE called Interlisp
• Edsger W. Dijkstra, first ALGOL 60 compiler, weakest preconditions, the 1972 Turing Award for fundamental contributions to developing programming languages
• Damien Doligez, co-developer and implementor of OCaml, especially its garbage collector
• Sophia Drossopoulou, formal methods for programming languages, proof of the soundness of Java

  E

• Wim Ebbinkhuijsen, one of the fathers of COBOL, designed and rewrote dozens of parts of the current COBOL standard
• Alan Edelman, the 2019 Sidney Fernbach Award for... and for contributions to the Julia programming language
• Brendan Eich, designer of JavaScript
• Andrey Ershov, see [|Andrey Yershov]

  F

• Matthias Felleisen, ACM SIGPLAN 2018 PL Software Award for Racket, ACM SIGPLAN 2012 PL Achievement Award
• Jeanne Ferrante, developed the Program dependence graph, ACM SIGPLAN 2006 PL Achievement Award
• Robby Findler, thesis on linguistics of software contracts, the ACM SIGPLAN 2018 PL Software Award for Racket, design/implementation of Redex, a workbench for semantics engineers
• Keno Fischer, a core member implementing the Julia programming language,
• Matthew Flatt, ACM SIGPLAN 2018 PL Software Award for Racket
• Robert W. Floyd, the 1978 Turing Award for..., and for helping to found the following important subfields of computer science: the theory of parsing, the semantics of programming languages, automatic program verification, automatic program synthesis, and analysis of algorithms
• Robert France, the 2014 AITO Dahl–Nygaard Prize for his research on adding formal semantics to OO modeling notations
• Daniel P. Friedman, influential paper on lazy programming, explored macros for defining programming languages, lead author of Essentials of Programming Languages
• Yoshihiko Futamura, partial evaluation, especially Futamura projections

  G

• Richard P. Gabriel, for work on Lisp, and especially Common Lisp; the 2004 ACM-AAAI Allen Newell Award for innovations in programming languages and software design...
• Bernard Galler, involved in the development of computer languages, including MAD
• Erich Gamma, co-wrote the JUnit software testing framework; one of the Gang of Four, the 2006 AITO Dahl–Nygaard Prize, for... their book Design Patterns:..., ACM SIGPLAN 2005 PL Achievement Award
• Charles Geschke, co-author of The Design of an Optimizing Compiler, the 1989 ACM Software System Award for PostScript
• Jeremy Gibbons, generic programming and functional programming, member of IFIP Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi, which supports and maintains ALGOL 60 and ALGOL 68
• Seymour Ginsburg, fundamental work in formal languages and abstract family of languages
• Adele Goldberg, the 1987 ACM Software System Award for Smalltalk
• Andrew Gordon, co-designer of Concurrent Haskell, co-inventor of the ambient calculus for reasoning about mobile code, designed SecPAL
• James Gosling, the 2002 ACM Software System Award for Java
• Robert Graham, co-authored two compilers, GAT for the IBM 650 and MAD
• Susan Graham, the 2009 IEEE John von Neumann Medal for "contributions to PL design and implementation...", member NAE, ACM SIGPLAN 2000 PL Achievement Award
• Cordell Green, the 1985 Grace Murray Hopper Award for establishing the theoretical basis of the field of logic programming
• Sheila Greibach, grammar theory, Greibach normal form
• David Gries, first text on writing compilers, contributions to semantics of programming language constructs, e.g. Interference freedom and
• Robert Griesemer, co-designer of Go
• Ralph Griswold, designer of SNOBOL, SL5, and Icon
• Jürg Gutknecht, co-developer of the language Oberon, developer of the language Zonnon
• John Guttag, co-developer of the Larch family of formal specification languages and the Larch Prover
• Michael Guy, co-author of ALGOL 68C