Peter Naur (October 25, 1928, to January 3, 2016) was a Danish scientist who made important contributions to computer science. He received the Turing Award in 2005 for his work. He is best known for helping John Backus develop the Backus–Naur form (BNF), a system used to describe the rules for writing code in many programming languages. He also helped create the programming language ALGOL 60.

Biography

Peter Naur began his career as an astronomer and earned his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in 1957. However, his work with computers led him to change professions. From 1959 to 1969, he worked at Regnecentralen, a Danish computing company, while also teaching at the Niels Bohr Institute and the Technical University of Denmark. From 1969 to 1998, he was a professor of computer science at the University of Copenhagen.

He was a member of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi. This group helped create, support, and keep updated the computer languages ALGOL 60 and ALGOL 68. Between 1960 and 1993, he was part of the editorial board for BIT Numerical Mathematics, a journal focused on numerical analysis.

Naur’s main areas of study included the design, structure, and performance of computer programs and algorithms. He also contributed to the development of software engineering and software architecture. In his book Computing: A Human Activity (1992), he argued against the formalist school of programming, which views programming as a branch of mathematics. He disliked being linked to the Backus–Naur form (a term Donald Knuth attributed to him) and preferred it to be called the Backus normal form.

Naur was married to Christiane Floyd, a computer scientist.

He did not like the term "computer science" and suggested it be called "datalogy" or "data science." The term "datalogy" is now used in Denmark and Sweden as "datalogi," while "data science" is now used for data analysis, including statistics and databases.

Since the mid-1960s, computer science in Denmark has been practiced under Naur’s term "datalogy," which refers to the study of data processes. Starting at Regnecentralen and the University of Copenhagen, the Copenhagen Tradition of Computer Science developed unique features through close connections with practical applications and other fields. This tradition is especially visible in education, where hands-on projects are a key part of the curriculum, helping students connect theory to real-world solutions. Naur recognized the challenges of teaching computer science and his ideas influenced education at other universities. The approach to teaching computer science at the University of Copenhagen closely matches Naur’s research views.

In later years, Naur emphasized the importance of observing facts rather than seeking deeper explanations for natural phenomena. He criticized certain ideas in philosophy and psychology from this perspective. He also developed a theory about human thinking called the "Synapse-State Theory of Mental Life."

Naur won the 2005 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M. Turing Award for his work on defining the programming language ALGOL 60. His role as editor of the influential Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 60, which used BNF for the first time, was recognized. Naur is the only Dane to have won the Turing Award.

Naur died on January 3, 2016, after a short illness. His former home in Gentofte was later owned by the sociologist Claire Maxwell.