Kenneth Eric Iverson is best known for his creation, and continuous updating, of the computer programming language APL.

Iverson was born in 1928 in Canada and raised on a farm near Edmonton. After schooling in Edmonton Iverson attended Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. Here he received a B.A. in mathematics and physics in 1950 and an M.A. in mathematics the following year. Iverson then moved to Harvard University to study for his Ph.D. in applied mathematics. Upon completion of his studies Iverson accepted a position as assistant professor at Harvard, where he stayed from 1955 to 1960. Before his time at Harvard Iverson had already begun thinking about the basic ideas that would lead to APL (A Programming Language)--a novel notation system for operations on numeric arrays. In 1960 Iverson joined the IBM Corporation at the research division of the Yorktown Heights facility. In 1962 Iverson published the first description...