Thomas E. Kurtz

Thomas Eugene Kurtz (February 22, 1928 to November 12, 2024) was an American computer scientist and educator, a Dartmouth professor of mathematics who with colleague John G. Kemeny co-developed the BASIC programming language and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System in 1963 and 1964, innovations that made computing more accessible by simplifying programming for non-experts and letting multiple users share one computer. He received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award in 1991 and was inducted as an ACM Fellow in 1994.