April 30, 1944 — Jan. 20, 2016

Preparing for the future

An early programmer for DEC, Ed Yourdon eventually discovered his language of choice wasn't Fortran, but English. He founded his own consulting firm in 1974 and became a prolific author, writing or contributing to more than two dozen books and publishing more than 550 articles. Yourdon was among the first to predict the severity of the Y2K bug if left unaddressed. Thanks to his forewarning, disaster was mitigated in what some consider IT's finest hour.

Yourdon was inducted into the Computer Hall of Fame in 1997 alongside such prestigious fellow inductees as Grace Hopper and Charles Babbage. He died at 71.