William Stanley Brown

William Stanley Brown

American gifted mathematician and physicist. Earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1961. Joined the Bell Labs Research Department and was a pioneer in the emerging fields of computer science and information systems. Developed ALTRAN, a FORTRAN extension providing rational algebra, around 1968. Continued to contribute to Bell Labs’ international planning program and its global information sharing community until his retirement in 1996.

Portable programs

A program is portable to the extent that it can be easily moved to a new computing environment with much less effort than would be required to write it afresh.

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