1928-

American mathematician who received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1956. He was cofounder with John Kemeny of the computer programming language BASIC (beginners all-purpose symbolic instruction code), the first common programming language of microcomputers. BASIC uses English words and decimal notation rather than binary numbers. He served on the President's Science Advisory Committee in 1965-66 and later became vice-chairman and director of True Basics, Inc., the company he founded with Kemeny.