Ask the Chatbot Games & Quizzes History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture ProCon Money Videos
Tony Hoare
Table of Contents
Introduction References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics
Related Questions
Read Next
Programming computer abstract
Influential Computer Programming Languages
President Richard M. Nixon smiles and gives the victory sign as he boards the White House helicopter after his resignation on August 9, 1974 in Washington, D.C.
Timeline of the 1970s
Germans from East and West stand on the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate in the November 10, 1989, photo, one day after the wall opened.
Timeline of the 1980s
Discover
A mug shot taken by the regional Colombia control agency in Medellin
Pablo Escobar: 8 Interesting Facts About the King of Cocaine
Four year old boy with grandfather and father lighting Hanukkah menorah. Photo taken on: December 21st, 2009
Which Is Correct: Hanukkah or Chanukah?
Stylish light blue jeans on wooden background, closeup of inset pocket
Why Do Jeans Have That Tiny Pocket?
Hemp (Cannabis sativa).
9 Mind-Altering Plants
Orange basketball on black background and with low key lighting. Homepage 2010, arts and entertainment, history and society
The 10 Greatest Basketball Players of All Time
Coriander leaves, fresh green cilantro on wooden background, herbs
Why Does Cilantro Taste Like Soap to Some People?
Watergate scandal. Richard M. Nixon. President Nixon gives a press conference and talks to the press, March 12, 1971.
9 American Political Scandals

Tony Hoare

British computer scientist
verifiedCite
While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.
Select Citation Style
Share
Share to social media
URL
https://mainten.top/biography/Tony-Hoare
Feedback
Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login).
Thank you for your feedback

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

External Websites
Also known as: Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare
Written by
William L. Hosch
William L. Hosch was an editor at Encyclopædia Britannica.
William L. Hosch
Fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Article History
Quick Facts
In full:
Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare
Born:
January 11, 1934, Colombo, Sri Lanka (age 90)
Awards And Honors:
Turing Award (1980)

Tony Hoare (born January 11, 1934, Colombo, Sri Lanka) is a British computer scientist and winner of the 1980 A.M. Turing Award, the highest honour in computer science, for “his fundamental contributions to the definition and design of programming languages.”

In 1956 Hoare earned a bachelor’s degree in classics from the University of Oxford. Following graduation, he studied Russian during his national service in the Royal Navy (1956–58) and then took some graduate-level courses in statistics and computer programming at Oxford. In 1959 Hoare moved to Russia for graduate work in probability theory and computer translation of human languages at Moscow State University. At that time, Hoare devised Quicksort, a computer algorithm for efficiently looking up information in computer tables.

Hoare returned to England in 1960 and joined Elliot Brothers, Ltd., a computer manufacturer, where he worked on programming languages, especially the development of a compiler for a version of ALGOL. In 1968 Hoare accepted a professorship in computer science at Queen’s University of Belfast. He returned to Oxford as a computer science professor in 1977. Following his retirement from Oxford in 1999, Hoare became a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, a division of the Microsoft Corporation, in Cambridge, England.

In addition to numerous papers, Hoare’s published works included Communicating Sequential Processes (1985); Mathematical Logic and Programming Languages (1985), with John C. Shepherdson; Essays in Computing Science (1989), with Clifford B. Jones; and Developments in Concurrency and Communication (1991). In addition to the Turing Award, Hoare received the Faraday Medal (1985), the Kyoto Prize (2000), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ John von Neumann Medal (2011). He was knighted by Elizabeth II in 2000 for his contributions to computer science.

William L. Hosch