Ken Bowles, a UC San Diego software engineer who helped popularize personal computers in the 1970s and ‘80s through advances that were exploited by such entrepreneurs as Apple’s Steve Jobs, died on Aug. 15 in Solana Beach. He was 89.

His passing was announced by the university, which said that Bowles, an emeritus professor of computer science, had died peacefully.

Bowles was not well-known to the general public. But he was famous in computer science for helping researchers make the leap from huge, expensive mainframe computers to small “microcomputers,” the forerunner of PCs.

He was driven by the desire to make it faster and easier for researchers and programmers to work on their own, and to develop software that could be used on many types of computers.


By 1968, Bowles found himself in the perfect spot to push his vision. He was appointed director of the university’s computer center, just three years after joining the faculty.

University historians say Bowles taught his students to write and rewrite code on the world’s first microprocessors, the chips that revolutionized the computer industry in the 1970s. They were soon writing programs expressly for microcomputers, bypassing mainframes.

Bowles and his team also adopted and modified Pascal, an early programming language that was opening up computer science. The modified version became known as UCSD Pascal and was widely used to teach people how to program.

The program was composed of language, an operating system and tools, making it of enormous use to other universities, industry and government.


Apple developed its own version of Pascal, based on the UC San Diego program. The company’s version was made part of the Apple II family of computers in the late 1970s. The Apple II soon emerged as the first commercially successful personal computer.

“The development of UCSD Pascal was a transformative event not just for UCSD but for all of computer science,” according to a statement by Dean Tullsen, chair of the department of computer science and engineering at UC San Diego.

“It was arguably the first high-level programming system that both worked on small systems that schools, most businesses, and eventually individuals could afford, and was portable across many systems.”

Bill Howden, another UC San Diego computer scientist, said, “When Ken did his UCSD Pascal project it was novel not only because of the substance, but because it was experimental.


“In some circles, researchers would ask ‘where is the science, the principles?’

“Computer science was a genuinely new world … something that was not properly appreciated at the time.”

Bowles succeeded, say many, because of the help he received from Mark Overgaard, a talented graduate student.

Overgaard looks back on those days wistfully, telling the Union-Tribune, “One of my favorite memories of working as Ken’s lieutenant is our frequent Sunday afternoon phone chats.


“The topics ranged widely: a proposal to Steve Jobs for collaboration on UCSD Pascal for the Apple II; strategizing on a technical or team chemistry matter; or a new Ken prospectus, perhaps for hosting a small international meeting to discuss standardizing extensions to the Pascal language.

“These sessions allowed me to learn from and be inspired by a world-class collaborator, project creator, team leader and all-around terrific person.”

Late in life, Bowles moved away from computing and became a nature photographer, where he paid special attention to plants.

“Ever practical, Dad channeled his botanist mother and found that the intricacies of plant identification were enough like the steps of an engineering problem to appeal to him,” said Ann Bowles of San Diego, one of his three daughters.


“We identified plants and animals wherever we traveled.

“It was characteristic of him that he put as much work into developing a better method for identifying the wildflowers, an ‘app’ called a multiple-entry key, as he did into figuring out how to create exquisitely-detailed photographs of the flowers.”