Adin D. Falkoff (19 December 1921 – 13 August 2010) was an engineer and computer systems and programming systems designer who was mostly known for his work on the programming language APL and systems for IBM.

Career

Falkoff, born in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, received a

Bachelor of Engineering A Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) or a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) is an academic undergraduate degree awarded to a student after three to five years of studying engineering at an accredited college or university. In the UK, a Ba ...

(B.Ch.E.) from the City College of New York in 1941, and a

Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

(M.A.) in Mathematics from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

in 1963. He was a researcher and manager at

IBM Research IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research or ...

since 1955 for over forty years before retiring.Cf
bio
in letter of recommendation for his wife, Dr. Linda D. Misek-Falkoff, to the Internet Governance Caucus IGF Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group He collaborated with Ken Iverson from 1960 to 1980 on the design, development, and use of the APL programming language and interactive environment. Of special note is his landmark article, ''A Formal Description of System/360'', describing the then new IBM System/360 computer system, formally, in APL programming notation. Falkoff was a visiting member of the faculty of IBM's Systems Research Institute, and taught

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

. He was one of the researchers who established and managed the IBM

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

Scientific Center and received many awards for his work, especially with APL.

Representative publications

*Adin D. Falkoff, "Algorithms for Parallel-Search Memories".

Journal of the ACM The ''Journal of the ACM'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering computer science in general, especially theoretical aspects. It is an official journal of the Association for Computing Machinery. Its current editor-in-chief is Venkatesan ...

9:4:488-511 (1962) *Adin D. Falkoff, Kenneth E. Iverson, Edward H. Sussenguth Jr.
"A Formal Description of System/360"
'' IBM Systems Journal'' 3:3:198-262 (1964) *Falkoff, A.D., and K.E. Iverson, ''APL\360 User’s Manual'', IBM Corporation, August 1968
full text in PDF
*Falkoff, A.D., and K.E. Iverson, "The Design of APL", '' IBM Journal of Research and Development'' 17:4, July 1973
full text in PDF
*Falkoff, A.D., and K.E. Iverson, "The Evolution of APL", ''ACM SIGPLAN Notices'' 13:8, August 1978

*Falkoff. A.D., and K.E. Iverson, ''A Source Book In APL'', APL Press, 1981 *Falkoff, A.D., "The IBM Family of APL Systems", '' IBM Systems Journal'' 30:4, December 1991
full text in PDF

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Falkoff, Adin IBM employees APL implementers City College of New York alumni Yale University alumni 1921 births People from New Jersey 2010 deaths People from Pleasantville, New York