John E. L. Peck

John Edward Lancelot Peck (August 14, 1918 to November 6, 2013) was a South African born Canadian computer scientist. Born in South Africa, he earned a BSc and MSc in mathematics from the University of Natal and a PhD from Yale University in 1950 with a thesis on topological semigroups. He taught at Brown University, the University of New Brunswick and McGill University, and was the first head of the mathematics department at the University of Calgary, before becoming the first permanent head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, a post he held from 1969 to 1977. He was an editor of the original Report on the Algorithmic Language ALGOL 68 and a contributing editor of its Revised Report, served as Canada's representative to IFIP Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages, and chaired that working group from 1975 to 1978, with research interests spanning topology and programming language design.