Cornelis HA Koster

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Kees Koster (left) and Stefan Jänichen (right) at the NORIS meeting in 2000

Cornelis Hermanns Antonius "Kees" Koster (born July 13, 1943 in Haarlem ; † March 21, 2013 in Nijmegen ) was a Dutch computer scientist and nestor of compiler and programming language construction in computer science and a linguist.

Life

His parents emigrated to Indonesia with three children, of whom Cornelis was the oldest, after the Second World War. There Koster attended the primary school in Jakarta . At the age of eleven he returned to the Netherlands. During his time at the Catholic St. Ignatius Gymnasium ( Sint Ignatiusgymnasium ) in Amsterdam , he was a boarding school student. Together with his classmate Lambert Meertens , he built his first computer at the age of 17. After school he studied at the University of Amsterdam , where he received his doctorate in 1965. After completing his studies, he worked at Adriaan van Wijngaarden's Mathematical Center (MC) together with Lambert Meertens. The 1972 Turing Award winner, Edsger W. Dijkstra, also worked there at the same time .

In the development phase of the cybernetics / computer science department at the Technical University of Berlin , Koster headed the programming languages ​​and compilers department together with Bleicke Eggers from 1972 to 1976 . From a formal and legal point of view, Koster had received a professorship as an artist, only with a physics intermediate diploma in the newly emerging subject; previously he had earned his spurs as a programmer and developer at Edsger W. Dijkstra, also an employee of van Wijngaarden .

Under his leadership, compiler construction and compiler generation were taught at the TU Berlin and the markup and programming languages Compiler Description Language (CDL) and ELAN were developed, which have also been used for many years in the training of students - not only at the TU Berlin .

In 1977 Koster was appointed to the Catholic University of Nijmegen (today: "Radboud University Nijmegen"). His inaugural lecture there is published as a book. Most recently he lived as a professor emeritus at Radboud University in Nijmegen. Koster was one of the lead authors of the fundamental work Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL68 and creator of the Compiler Description Language (CDL) and Affix Grammars , a variant of the Van Wijngaarden grammars , the functionality of which is now covered by compiler generators such as Yacc and Bison , which are part of the standard toolbox of the Linux , GNU and macOS operating systems .

Koster died in a car collision in 2013 as an enthusiastic, life-long accident-free motorcyclist and was buried in Nijmegen. In 2011 he still took part in the meeting of the alumni of the New Oriented Computer Science Study Plan (NORIS) at the TU Berlin, with which the new department was launched in 1972.

Publications

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Radboud University Nijmegen , Faculty of Science, Institute for Computing and Information Science, March 22, 2013: In memoriam Kees Koster (English, saved as a memento)
  2. ↑ a b Radboud University Nijmegen , Faculty of Science, Institute for Computing and Information Science, March 22, 2013: In memoriam Kees Koster (Dutch)
  3. ↑ a b daily newspaper de Volkskrant , April 16, 2013: Kees Koster 1943-2013. Hij ontwierp een van de belangrijkste computertalen en was vraagbaak voor bedrijven en studenten , (German: "Kees Koster 1943-2013. He designed one of the most important computer languages ​​and was a beacon of knowledge for companies and students") Obituary saved as a memento
  4. ^ TU Berlin , Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science: The faculty mourns the loss of Professor Dr. rer. nat. Bleicke Eggers ( Memento from July 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Stefan Jähnichen : Programming language debates in the 1970s: What has remained of ELAN? , Lecture at the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin in the Kids & Codes series. Programming yesterday and today. Conference at the Vintage Computing Festival Berlin 2017
  6. ↑ K. Koster: Het betere programmeerwerk: Brede uitgesproken bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van gewoon hoogleraar in de informatica aan de Katholieke Universiteit te Nijmegen op 3 February 1978
  7. ↑ TU Berlin , Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science: Obituaries: The Faculty mourns the loss of Professor Cornelis HA (Kees) Koster ( Memento from July 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ participant

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Koster, Cornelis HA
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Koster, Cornelis Hermanns Antonius (full name); Koster, Kees (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH July 13, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Haarlem
DATE OF DEATH 21st March 2013
Place of death Nijmegen