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In 1999, a budding Swiss software engineer was preparing for a conference in France when he learned that Swiss computer scientist Niklaus Wirth, a pioneer in the field, would be attending and on the same flight.
Engineer Kent Baker never met Dr. Voss. But, he recalled in an interview, upon arriving at the airport, he told the gate agent: “My colleague Professor Voss is flying with me. Can we sit together?”
Mr. Baker, who eventually became a famous programmer in his own right, said sitting next to Dr. Voss and chatting was like a young singer getting the chance to perform with Swift. Among other feats in computer history, Dr. Wirth created Pascal, a programming language that was influential in the early days of personal computing.
“It was out of character for me to be so bold,” Baker said of his duplicity, “but I will regret it for the rest of my life.”
The agent gave him a middle seat next to his so-called colleague, who had a window. When Mr. Baker sat down, he immediately admitted his fraud. Dr. Voss is kind of funny. “Once geeks know you’re interested in their geekiness,” Mr. Baker said, “then the conversation starts.”
Dr. Wirth died of heart failure at his home in Zurich on January 1, said his daughter, Tina Wirth. He is 89 years old.
He is far less well-known than programmers such as Steve Wozniak (who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs) or Bill Gates (who co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen). But to Mr. Baker and legions of computer scientists, Dr. Voss was one of the most influential and inspiring scientists of the early computer age.
In 1970, while teaching at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Dr. Wirth released Pascal, a programming language that powered early Apple computers and initial versions of applications such as Skype and Adobe Photoshop. He also built the first personal computer and helped a Swiss startup commercialize the mouse. (The startup Logitech became one of the world’s largest makers of computer accessories.)
The Computing Machinery Association awarded Dr. Wirth the Turing Award in 1984, which is often called the Nobel Prize of computing. Other winners include Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and Vinton G. Cerf, who wrote the communications code for the Internet.
Simplicity was crucial in computing for Dr. Wirth, who created Pascal (named after 17th-century French mathematician and calculator inventor Blaise Pascal) as a successor to languages such as BASIC. A simpler alternative, he thought BASIC was too cumbersome.
BASIC forced programmers to “jump around and write spaghetti code,” Philippe Kahn, a former student of Dr. Wirth’s who later founded several technology companies, told “Go To” in an interview for his book “Go To.” New York Times reporter Steve Lohr. ” (2001), Software History.
“Pascal forced people to think clearly about the structure of things and data,” Mr. Kahn said. He added: “Vos’s impact was extremely profound because many people who took real computer science courses studied Pascal. This was the language of classical thinking in computing.”
In 1995, Dr. Voss published a seminal article in Computer magazine preaching simplicity. “People seem to increasingly misunderstand complexity as complexity,” he writes, “which is confusing—what is difficult to understand should arouse suspicion, not admiration.”
Niklaus Emil Wirth was born on February 15, 1934 in Winterthur, Switzerland, the son of Walter Wirth, professor of geography, and Hedwick Wirth, who managed the family. The only son of Hedwick (Keller) Wirth.
He is a precocious child.
“In elementary school, I first wanted to be a steam engine driver and then a pilot,” he recalled in a 2014 interview. “I never aspired to be a scientist, but rather to be an engineer who understands nature and uses that knowledge to do something useful.”
He built a chemistry laboratory in the basement of his home. He fiddled with the radio. He also built (and crashed) a remote-controlled helicopter. Fixing these problems taught him an early lesson in simplicity.
“If you have to pay out of pocket,” he told BusinessWeek in 1990, “you learn not to overcomplicate the fix.”
Dr. Wirth studied electrical engineering at ETH Zurich, a technical university. After graduating in 1959, he received a master’s degree from Université Laval in Quebec and a doctorate from the University of Quebec in Canada. in Programming Languages from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1963 to 1967, he taught in the newly established Department of Computer Science at Stanford University, then returned to Switzerland.
At the request of ETH officials, Dr. Wirth opened the Department of Computer Science. When he tried to determine which programming language he wanted to teach, he found the options were too complex. He began studying Pascal and in 1971 used it to teach an introductory programming course.
Dr. Voss made no attempt to monetize Pascal. In fact, he sent the original code on a nine-track tape to anyone who wanted it. The university’s generosity coincided with the microprocessor revolution, making a free, easy-to-use language available to professors, budding programmers, and emerging computer companies.
“Pascal,” Dr. Voss liked to say, “is a public good.”
In 1976, Dr. Wirth took a sabbatical to work at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, which developed the Alto, one of the first desktop computers with a mouse-controlled graphical interface.
“I had an Alto computer on my desk for my personal use, and it revolutionized the way computers were used,” Dr. Wirth recalled in Computer magazine in 2012.
Dr. Voss wanted an Alto, but they weren’t for sale. So when he returned to Switzerland, he built himself a similar computer and used his own new programming language.
His first marriage to Nani Jucker ended in divorce in 1959. In 1984, he married Diana Blessing. She died in 2009.
In addition to his daughter Tina from his first marriage, Dr. Wirth leaves behind two other children from that marriage: Chris Wirth and Caroline Wiskeman Carolyn Wiskemann). six grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; and his partner since 2017, Rosmarie Müller.
In accepting the Turing Award, Dr. Voss spoke with awe about his first experience with the power of personal computing at Xerox.
“Instead of sharing a large single-chip computer with many other people and competing for it over 3 kHz bandwidth wires, I now use my own computer sitting under my desk over a 15 MHz channel,” he said. “The impact of a 5,000-fold increase in anything is unforeseeable; it’s overwhelming.”
Now he no longer works for the computer, but the computer works for him.
“This was the first time I was doing my daily correspondence and report writing with the help of a computer, rather than planning new languages, compilers and programs for others to use.”
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