Elizabeth "Bess" D. Rather (born 1940) is the co-founder of FORTH, Inc. and is a leading expert in the Forth programming language. She became involved with Forth while she was at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

, but working part-time for

National Radio Astronomy Observatory The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a federally funded research and development center of the United States National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. for the purpose of radio a ...

(NRAO). While she initially aimed to rewrite their systems (written in Forth) in FORTRAN, her discovery of the power of Forth convinced her to leave the University to work for NRAO and

Kitt Peak National Observatory The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is a United States astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation, west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona. With more than ...

, where she wrote the first Forth manual and started popularizing the language in the scientific community. She co-founded FORTH, Inc. with Charles Moore in 1973. Since then, she has become an expert in the language and one of its main proponents. She is an author of several books on the subject and has given many training seminars on its usage. From 1980 to 2006 she was President of FORTH, Inc., headquartered in the

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

area. From 1986 to 1994, she was chair of the Technical Committee X3J14 that developed the ANSI Standard (X3.215-1994) for the Forth programming language.ANS Forth Standard
ANSI X3.215-1994, page ''ix'', members of Technical Committee X3J14. In 2006, she retired and lives in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

, but continues with occasional Forth-related writing and teaching projects.

Publications

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References

External links

FORTH, Inc.
Living people 1940 births University of Arizona people American computer programmers American computer scientists American women computer scientists 21st-century American women {{Compu-bio-stub