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Adin D. Falkoff (19 December 1921 – 13 August 2010) was an engineer and computer systems and programming systems designer who was mostly known for his work on the programming language APL and systems for IBM.

Career

Falkoff, born in New Jersey, received a Bachelor of Engineering (B.Ch.E.) from the City College of New York in 1941, and a Master's degree (M.A.) in Mathematics from Yale University in 1963.

He was a researcher and manager at IBM Research since 1955 for over forty years before retiring. He collaborated with Ken Iverson from 1960 to 1980 on the design, development, and use of the APL programming language and interactive environment.

Of special note is his landmark article, A Formal Description of System/360, describing the then new IBM System/360 computer system, formally, in APL programming notation.

Falkoff was a visiting member of the faculty of IBM's Systems Research Institute, and taught computer science at Yale University. He was one of the researchers who established and managed the IBM Philadelphia Scientific Center and received many awards for his work, especially with APL.

Representative publications

• Adin D. Falkoff, "Algorithms for Parallel-Search Memories". Journal of the ACM 9:4:488-511 (1962)
• Adin D. Falkoff, Kenneth E. Iverson, Edward H. Sussenguth Jr., "A Formal Description of System/360". IBM Systems Journal 3:3:198-262 (1964)
• Falkoff, A.D., and K.E. Iverson, APL\360 User’s Manual, IBM Corporation, August 1968. full text in PDF
• Falkoff, A.D., and K.E. Iverson, "The Design of APL", IBM Journal of Research and Development 17:4, July 1973. full text in PDF
• Falkoff, A.D., and K.E. Iverson, "The Evolution of APL", ACM SIGPLAN Notices 13:8, August 1978. full text in PDF
• Falkoff, A.D., and K.E. Iverson, A Source Book In APL, APL Press, 1981
• Falkoff, A.D., "The IBM Family of APL Systems", IBM Systems Journal 30:4, December 1991. full text in PDF

Notes

1. Computer History Museum page
2. US Social Security Death Record published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
3. Cf. bio Archived 2012-02-18 at the Wayback Machine in letter of recommendation for his wife, Dr. Linda D. Misek-Falkoff, to the Internet Governance Caucus IGF Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group

v t e APL programming
Features	APL syntax and symbols Direct function (dfn) Code pages Iverson bracket Rank Shared Variables
Implementations	Major Dyalog APL APL2 → APLX SHARP APL NARS → NARS2000° Dialects A → A+° APLNext → VisualAPL ELI GNU APL° J° kdb+ K, Q Polymorphic Programming Language (PPL)
Community	Professional associations Association for Computing Machinery: SIGAPL British APL Association Organizations Business Ampere Analogic Corporation APL2000 CompuServe Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) DNA Systems Dyalog Ltd. IBM I. P. Sharp Associates Kx Systems Micro Computer Machines (MCM) Science Research Associates Scientific Time Sharing Corporation (STSC) Soliton Incorporated Telecompute Integrated Systems, Inc. Time Sharing Resources (TSR) Education Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) University of Maryland People Phil Abrams Bob Bernecky Larry Breed Charles Brenner Fred Brooks Jim Brown Adin Falkoff Patrick E. Hagerty Herbert Hellerman Roger Hui Kenneth E. Iverson Dick Lathwell Eugene McDonnell Robert Metzger Roger Moore Alan Perlis John Scholes J. Henri Schueler Bob Smith Edward H. Sussenguth Jr. Arthur Whitney William Yerazunis Rodnay Zaks Iverson Award
Italics = discontinued ° = Open-source software Commons Category

• IBM employees
• APL implementers
• City College of New York alumni
• Yale University alumni
• 1921 births
• Engineers from New Jersey
• 2010 deaths
• People from Pleasantville, New York