Naur began his career as an
astronomer for which he received his
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in 1957, but his encounter with computers led to a change of profession. From 1959 to 1969, he was employed at
Regnecentralen, the Danish computing company, while at the same time giving lectures at the
Niels Bohr Institute and the
Technical University of Denmark. From 1969 to 1998, Naur was a professor of computer science at
University of Copenhagen. He was a member of the
International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)
IFIP Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi, which
specified, supports, and maintains the languages
ALGOL 60 and
ALGOL 68. Between the years 1960 and 1993 he was a member of the editorial board for
BIT Numerical Mathematics, a journal focused on
numerical analysis. Naur's main areas of inquiry were design, structure, and performance of
computer programs and
algorithms. He also pioneered in
software engineering and
software architecture. In his book
Computing: A Human Activity (1992), which is a collection of his contributions to computer science, he rejected the formalist school of programming that views programming as a branch of
mathematics. He did not like being associated with the
Backus–Naur form (attributed to him by
Donald Knuth) and said that he would prefer it to be called the
Backus normal form. Naur was married to computer scientist
Christiane Floyd. Naur disliked the term
computer science and suggested it be called
datalogy or
data science. The former term has been adopted in Denmark and Sweden as
datalogi, while the latter term is now used for
data analysis, including statistics and databases. Since the middle 1960s, computer science has been practiced in Denmark under Peter Naur's term
datalogy, the science of data processes. Starting at Regnecentralen and the University of Copenhagen, the Copenhagen Tradition of Computer Science has developed its own special characteristics by means of a close connection with applications and other fields of knowledge. The tradition is not least visible in the area of education. Comprehensive project activity is an integral part of the curriculum, thus presenting theory as an aspect of realistic solutions known primarily through actual experience. Peter Naur early recognized the particular educational challenges presented by computer science. His innovations have shown their quality and vitality also at other universities. There is a close connection between computer science training as it has been formed at Copenhagen University, and the view of computer science which characterized Peter Naur's research. In later years, he was quite outspoken of the pursuit of science as a whole: Naur can possibly be identified with the
empiricist school, that tells that one shall not seek deeper connections between things that manifest themselves in the world, but keep to the observable facts. He has attacked both certain strands of philosophy and psychology from this viewpoint. He was also developing a theory of human thinking which he called "Synapse-State Theory of Mental Life". Naur won the 2005
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M.
Turing Award for his work on defining the programming language
ALGOL 60. In particular, his role as editor of the influential
Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 60 with its pioneering use of
BNF was recognized. Naur is the only Dane to have won the Turing Award. Naur died on 3 January 2016 after a short illness. His former home in
Gentofte was subsequently owned by the sociologist
Claire Maxwell. == Bibliography ==