Backus

Backus is a surname of European origin and may also refer to places in North America. In the field of computer science, the name is especially associated with John Backus, an American computer scientist who led the IBM team that developed FORTRAN, one of the first widely used high-level programming languages, in the 1950s.

Backus is also the namesake of Backus–Naur Form (BNF), a notation for expressing the grammar of formal languages. It was introduced by John Backus and Danish computer scientist Peter Naur to describe the syntax of programming languages, and it remains widely used in compiler design and language specifications.

Peter Naur (1928–2016) contributed to the development of formal language theory and the broader field of programming language design; his collaboration with Backus on BNF helped standardize a concise way to describe syntax.

Backus, Minnesota, is a small city in Cass County, United States. The name also appears in other geographic contexts and in historical references related to the Backus surname.