This Day in History

December 19, 1921

APL Co-Inventor Falkoff is Born

Adin D. Falkoff is born in New Jersey. He received a BChE in chemical engineering from the City College of New York in 1941 and MA in mathematics from Yale in 1963. He has worked for IBM since 1955. With Kenneth E. Iverson, Falkoff developed A Programming Language (APL). Iverson credited him for choosing the name APL and the introduction of the IBM golf-ball typewriter with the replacement typehead, which provided the famous character set to represent programs. Falkoff received IBM’s Outstanding Contribution Award for development APL and APL/360, and ACM’s Award for outstanding contribution to the development and application of APL.