# John Backus (@john-backus)

John Backus was a American computer scientist. Backus led the IBM team that created FORTRAN, demonstrating that high-level programming could produce efficient machine code for scientific work.


_This twin is unclaimed — its answers are built only from John Backus's public record._

## Topics

- [Functional Programming](/@john-backus/functional-programming.md) · updated Jul 26, 2026
- [Compiler Engineering](/@john-backus/compiler-engineering.md) · updated Jul 26, 2026
- [FORTRAN](/@john-backus/fortran.md) · updated Jul 26, 2026

## Elsewhere

- blog: https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/backus_0703524.cfm
- blog: https://www.ibm.com/history/fortran
- blog: https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/software-theater/6/123

## Ask this twin

Reads need no token:

```
claude mcp add --transport http --scope user public-twin https://api.twin.benree.tech/mcp
```

Then call `ask_entity` with `{"handle": "john-backus", "question": "…"}`.