John Backus

5.9k total citations · 2 hit papers
18 papers, 3.0k citations indexed

About

John Backus is a scholar working on Computational Theory and Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence and Hardware and Architecture. According to data from OpenAlex, John Backus has authored 18 papers receiving a total of 3.0k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 10 papers in Computational Theory and Mathematics, 9 papers in Artificial Intelligence and 5 papers in Hardware and Architecture. Recurrent topics in John Backus's work include Logic, programming, and type systems (7 papers), Computability, Logic, AI Algorithms (7 papers) and Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques (5 papers). John Backus is often cited by papers focused on Logic, programming, and type systems (7 papers), Computability, Logic, AI Algorithms (7 papers) and Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques (5 papers). John Backus collaborates with scholars based in United States, Russia and Brazil. John Backus's co-authors include Chaim Katz, A. van Wijngaarden, Bernard Vauquois, Heinz Rutishauser, Friedrich L. Bauer, J. H. Wegstein, M. Woodger, John McCarthy, Alan J. Perlis and K. Samelson and has published in prestigious journals such as Communications of the ACM, Journal of the ACM and Numerische Mathematik.

In The Last Decade

John Backus

18 papers receiving 2.4k citations

Hit Papers

align trajectories

What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

Can programming be liberated from the von Neumann style?

1978 1.5k citations John Backus Communications of the ACM profile →
Revised report on the algorithmic language ALGOL 60

1963 562 citations John Backus, Friedrich L. Bauer et al. Communications of the ACM profile →

Peers — A (Enhanced Table)

Peers by citation overlap · career bar shows stage (early→late) cites · hero ref

Name	h						Papers	Cites
John Backus United States	14	1.7k	961	825	655	431	18	3.0k
Dennis M. Ritchie United States	19	1.3k 0.8×	487 0.5×	1.2k 1.4×	1.7k 2.6×	164 0.4×	29	3.7k
Wm. A. Wulf United States	18	513 0.3×	165 0.2×	1.8k 2.1×	1.9k 2.9×	949 2.2×	53	3.6k
John Hughes Sweden	23	2.1k 1.2×	1.2k 1.2×	856 1.0×	776 1.2×	68 0.2×	94	3.5k
Patrick Lincoln United States	26	2.1k 1.2×	911 0.9×	424 0.5×	1.0k 1.5×	280 0.6×	77	3.1k
Martin Davis United States	22	2.8k 1.6×	3.2k 3.3×	365 0.4×	1.2k 1.8×	258 0.6×	93	5.3k
Daniel Lehmann Israel	35	2.3k 1.4×	1.4k 1.4×	90 0.1×	1.5k 2.3×	364 0.8×	170	5.8k
Donald Knuth United States	7	1.3k 0.8×	593 0.6×	333 0.4×	908 1.4×	276 0.6×	13	2.9k
Edward Fredkin United States	9	2.0k 1.2×	1.5k 1.5×	242 0.3×	329 0.5×	836 1.9×	15	2.9k
Michael O. Rabin United States	28	3.2k 1.9×	2.6k 2.7×	479 0.6×	1.7k 2.6×	323 0.7×	59	5.5k
Stefan Katzenbeisser Germany	28	1.7k 1.0×	303 0.3×	411 0.5×	516 0.8×	431 1.0×	211	4.1k

Countries citing papers authored by John Backus

Since Specialization

Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of John Backus's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by John Backus with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites John Backus more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by John Backus

Since Specialization

Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by John Backus. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by John Backus. The network helps show where John Backus may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of John Backus

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of John Backus. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of John Backus based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with John Backus. John Backus is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

Sort: Min cites: Since: Top N: Style:

18 of 18 papers shown

1.

Backus, John. (1998). The history of Fortran I, II, and III. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 20(4). 68–78. 7 indexed citations

2.

Backus, John, John H. Williams, & Edward L. Wimmers. (1990). An introduction to the programming language FL. Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc. eBooks. 219–247. 15 indexed citations

3.

Backus, John. (1982). Software I: Function-level computing: A new programming method, linked to radically different architectures, may greatly simplify software development. IEEE Spectrum. 19(8). 22–27. 16 indexed citations

4.

Backus, John. (1981). Function level programs as mathematical objects. 1–10. 10 indexed citations

5.

Backus, John. (1979). The History of FORTRAN I, II and III. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 1(1). 21–37. 23 indexed citations

6.

Backus, John. (1978). The history of FORTRAN I, II, and III. ACM SIGPLAN Notices. 13(8). 165–180. 36 indexed citations

7.

Backus, John. (1978). Can programming be liberated from the von Neumann style?. Communications of the ACM. 21(8). 613–641. 1517 indexed citations breakdown →

8.

Backus, John. (1973). Programming language semantics and closed applicative languages. 71–86. 34 indexed citations

9.

Backus, John, et al.. (1964). Fortran. IEEE Transactions on Electronic Computers. EC-13(4). 382–385. 8 indexed citations

10.

Backus, John, Friedrich L. Bauer, Chaim Katz, et al.. (1963). Revised report on the algorithmic language ALGOL 60. Communications of the ACM. 6(1). 1–17. 562 indexed citations breakdown →

11.

Backus, John. (1963). Revised report on the algorithmic language ALGOL 60. The Computer Journal. 5(4). 349–367. 87 indexed citations

12.

Backus, John, Friedrich L. Bauer, Chaim Katz, et al.. (1962). Revised report on the algorithmic languageAlgol 60. Numerische Mathematik. 4(1). 420–453. 63 indexed citations

13.

Backus, John, Friedrich L. Bauer, Chaim Katz, et al.. (1960). Report on the algorithmic language ALGOL 60. Numerische Mathematik. 2(1). 106–136. 56 indexed citations

14.

Backus, John, Friedrich L. Bauer, Chaim Katz, et al.. (1960). Report on the algorithmic language ALGOL 60. Communications of the ACM. 3(5). 299–311. 266 indexed citations

15.

Backus, John. (1959). The syntax and semantics of the proposed international algebraic language of the Zurich ACM-GAMM Conference.. IFIP Congress. 125–131. 186 indexed citations

16.

Backus, John, et al.. (1957). The FORTRAN automatic coding system. 188–198. 100 indexed citations

17.

Backus, John, et al.. (1956). The Fortran Automatic Coding System for the IBM 704 EDPM. 5 indexed citations

18.

Backus, John. (1954). The IBM 701 Speedcoding System. Journal of the ACM. 1(1). 4–6. 18 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

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