File:John_Backus_2.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
OverviewAI-generated
John Backus (1924–2007) was an author and person associated with the country of Germany. His written works include *The Acoustical Foundations of Music - Musical Sound*, *Questions and Problems for the Acoustical Foundations of Music*, and *The acoustical foundations of music*. He has an Erdős number of 5.
Backus is recognized in the American Academy Arts Sciences collection and the Turing Award collection. His profile is referenced by 688 other encyclopedia articles.
Synthesized by Vinony from 17 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Last.fm, Crossref, MusicBrainz, Open Library, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Works
- 3
Top works
- THE ACOUSTICAL FOUNDATIONS OF MUSIC - MUSICAL SOUND
- Questions and Problems for the Acoustical Foundations of Music
- The acoustical foundations of music
via Open Library + Wikidata
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 2
- Total plays
- 2
<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/John+Backus">Read more on Last.fm</a>
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- Generalized Gradient Approximation Made Simple
· 1996 · cited 204,297x
- Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
· 2021 · cited 43,514x
- Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology
· 2000 · cited 36,878x
- Matplotlib: A 2D Graphics Environment
· 2007 · cited 35,530x
- The MOS 36-ltem Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36)
· 1992 · cited 29,118x
via Crossref · CC0
Quotes
- “Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."”
- “Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs.”
- “You need the willingness to fail all the time. You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don’t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work .”
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- Philadelphia
- Place of death
- Ashland
- Occupation
- computer scientist
- Employer
- IBM
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Notable work
- FP
- Field of work
- informatics
- Conflict
- World War II
- Military branch
- United States Army
- Image
- John Backus 2.jpg
Show 11 more facts
- date of birth
- 1924-12-03
- date of death
- 2007-03-17
- Erdős number
- 5
- archives at
- Computer History Museum
- streaming media URL
- www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102657954
- Commons category
- John Backus
- place of burial
- San Francisco Columbarium
- birth name
- John Warner Backus
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
- name in native language
- John Warner Backus
via Wikidata · CC0