Person: Nygaard, Kristen
Kristen Nygaard was a Norwegian computer scientist, programming language pioneer, and politician. He was the co-inventor of object-oriented programming and the language Simula.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- William Nygaard taught at a high school in Voss, was a literary consultant and instructor at the National Theatre in Bergen, then was programme secretary for Norwegian National Broadcasting.
- Kristen attended Fagerborg high school, Pilestredet, Oslo.
- Nygaard graduated from Fagerborg high school in 1945.
- We have seen in the quote above that Nygaard was using Monte Carlo methods in his work for the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment.
- SIMULA, which Nygaard refers to in this quotation, is the object-oriented programming language of which he was the co-inventor.
- The 'expert programmer' that Nygaard referred to in this letter was Ole-Johan Dahl, now recognised as the other co-inventor of SIMULA.
- Nygaard rose rapidly in the Norwegian Computing Centre, becoming its Director of Research in 1962.
- If we ended this biography here we would get a totally false impression of Nygaard for he would simply come across as a brilliant computer scientist and mathematician.
- Even after Norway voted "no" to the European Union in a referendum on 28 November 1994, Nygaard did not give up opposing the European Union.
- The discrete event simulation language (Simula I) and general programming language (Simula 67) developed by Dahl and Nygaard at the Norwegian Computing Centre in Oslo, Norway in the 1960's, led the way for software programmers to build software systems in layers of abstraction.
Born 27 August 1926, Oslo, Norway. Died 10 August 2002, Oslo, Norway.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Norway
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
-
- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
