Jürg Gutknecht (born 3 January 1949) is a Swiss

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

. He developed, with

Niklaus Wirth Niklaus Emil Wirth ( IPA: ) (15 February 1934 – 1 January 2024) was a Swiss computer scientist. He designed several programming languages, including Pascal, and pioneered several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984, he won the Tu ...

, the

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

Oberon Oberon () is a king of the fairy, fairies in Middle Ages, medieval and Renaissance literature. He is best known as a character in William Shakespeare's play ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'', in which he is King of the Fairies and spouse of Titania ...

and the corresponding

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

Biography

Jürg Gutknecht was born in Bülach. He was full professor in the

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

department at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

) until April 2014. From 1967 to 1970, he was a member of the

real-time computing Real-time computing (RTC) is the computer science term for Computer hardware, hardware and software systems subject to a "real-time constraint", for example from Event (synchronization primitive), event to Event (computing), system response. Rea ...

system programming group at

Swissair Swissair (German language, German: Schweizerische Luftverkehr-AG; French language, French: S.A. Suisse pour la Navigation Aérienne, stylised as swissair) was the Flag carrier, national airline of Switzerland between its founding in 1931 and ban ...

. Then he studied

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

at the ETH and worked in parallel at International Business Machines (

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

) as a student employee. In 1978, he received his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

(Ph.D.) in mathematics. He joined

's research team in 1981, working on the

Lilith Lilith (; ), also spelled Lilit, Lilitu, or Lilis, is a feminine figure in Mesopotamian and Jewish mythology, theorized to be the first wife of Adam and a primordial she-demon. Lilith is cited as having been "banished" from the Garden of Eden ...

computer and

Modula-2 Modula-2 is a structured, procedural programming language developed between 1977 and 1985/8 by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich. It was created as the language for the operating system and application software of the Lilith personal workstation. It w ...

. After a

sabbatical A sabbatical (from the Hebrew: (i.e., Sabbath); in Latin ; Greek: ) is a rest or break from work; "an extended period of time intentionally spent on something that’s not your routine job." The concept of the sabbatical is based on the Bi ...

at PARC in 1984–1985, he developed, conjointly with Wirth, the

operating system based on the

language. Out of print
PDF (4'398 KB)
With Peter Schweri, he developed the system ''Sakkara'' for the purpose of writing partiturs of typical constructive Peter-Schweri-art compositions for presentation on computer and internet. In 2013, Gutknecht released another Oberon-style programming language, named Zonnon.

Publications

External links

Gutknecht personal webpage

ETHZ Who's who
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gutknecht, Jurg Swiss computer scientists Academic staff of ETH Zurich Living people 1949 births People from Bülach