Bjarne Stroustrup

Bjarne Stroustrup (b. 1950) is a Danish computer scientist best known as the designer and original implementer of the C++ programming language.^[1] His work brought object-oriented and generic programming into a language offering performance close to that of C, shaping decades of systems and application software.

Early life and education

Stroustrup was born on 30 December 1950 in Aarhus, Denmark.^[1] He studied at Aarhus University, where he took a degree in mathematics and computer science, before pursuing doctoral research at the University of Cambridge. There he was a member of Churchill College and completed a PhD in computer science.^[1]

Career

After completing his doctorate, Stroustrup joined the Computer Science Research Center at Bell Laboratories in the United States, where much of his early language work was carried out.^[1] He later moved into academia and industry, holding a professorship at Texas A&M University and roles associated with Morgan Stanley and Columbia University.^[2] Alongside his research, he became known as a writer and teacher, publishing books and articles that introduced generations of programmers to the language and its underlying design principles.^[2]

Creation of C++

Stroustrup set out to extend the C language with features supporting large-scale software development, such as classes, initially calling the result "C with Classes." The language was renamed C++ in the early 1980s.^[1] He documented it in The C++ Programming Language, first published in 1985, which became a standard reference, and he remained closely involved in the language's ongoing international standardization.^[2]

Recognition and legacy

C++ became one of the most widely used programming languages, employed in operating systems, embedded systems, games, high-performance computing, and financial software.^[1] Its emphasis on efficient abstraction has continued to influence the design of later languages and the practice of large-scale software engineering. Stroustrup has received numerous honors for this work, including the Charles Stark Draper Prize, the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, and the Faraday Medal, and he is a Fellow of both the ACM and the IEEE.^[3] He holds Danish and American nationality.^[1]