A Stanford student who attended a lecture by Ken Iverson in 1962, Breed was hired by Iverson after he pointed out inaccuracies in the formal description of IBM\'s System 360. At the IBM Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, he led the design and implementation of what came to be called APL. This became very popular within IBM, not only for the language, but for the quick reaction times and reliability of the system. In 1973, he and two associates received for this work the Grace Murray Hopper award for outstanding young computer professionals.