Kemeny, John George (1926-1992)

Hungarian-born US computer scientist and co-developer of the BASIC computer language. Kemeny was born in Budapest, Hungary, and emigrated to the USA in 1940 to escape the Nazis. While teaching at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz developed the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System and, in 1964, BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) to provide computer access to a wide range of undergraduate students. BASIC was based on Fortran, the language developed by John Backus at IBM.