- Author
- Not stated
- Published
- Last edited 4 November 2026
- Kind
- Wikipedia biography of a computer scientist
- Original
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare
- Subject
- Formal methods and proof
What it is
Volunteer editors wrote this biography. It sets out Hoare's education, posts, best-known work and honours. It was updated after the subject's death in March 2026.
What it says
- Hoare made foundational contributions to programming languages, algorithms, operating systems, formal verification and concurrent computing.
- Hoare developed the sorting algorithm quicksort in 1959 to 1960.
- The career ran from Elliott Brothers to Belfast in 1968, then Oxford in 1977.
- It records the 1980 Turing Award, usually regarded as computer science's highest distinction.
- It quotes Hoare apologising in 2009 for the null reference, called a billion-dollar mistake.
- It quotes a 1995 reflection that formal methods researchers had mispredicted industry take-up.
- It reports that Hoare died on 5 March 2026, aged 92.
What evidence it gives
The article cites obituaries, interviews, oral histories and the subject's own papers. It quotes two passages from Hoare directly. It does not weigh the significance of the work.
Interests and limits
Volunteers wrote the article and it was edited soon after the subject's death. Some template text appears garbled in the saved page. The quoted reflections are given without much context. The reference list and awards citations were not checked.