Co-creator of BASIC computer language, Thomas Kurtz, dies at 96

Thomas Eugene Kurtz, an American computer scientist and teacher who co-developed the simplified computer programming language known as BASIC, died on November 12, 2024, at the age of 96.

Reportedly, the cause of his death was multiple organ failure from sepsis, said Kurtz’s wife Agnes Seelye Bixler, or Aggie Kurtz.

Kurtz was a mathematics professor at Dartmouth and is widely credited for his work on the time-sharing concept at Dartmouth College and for developing BASIC along with his colleague John G. Kemeny. The concept’s vision was to allow computers to be freely available to college students just like library books.

The life of Thomas Kurtz

Kurtz was born on February 22, 1928, in Oak Park, Illinois. His academic journey started at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and led him to Princeton University, where he did his PhD in statistics.

In 1956, he was recruited by Kemeny to teach mathematics at Dartmouth College, where his collaboration with Kemeny changed the course of computing history. Kurtz was the Director of the Kiewit Computation Center at Dartmouth from 1966 to 1975 and the Director of the Office of Academic Computing from 1975 to 1978. He retired from teaching in 1993.

He is survived by his wife, Agnes Seelye Bixler, three children, a brother, 13 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren, according to a report by The Washington Post.

BASIC and time-sharing system

Kurtz and Kemeny completely transformed the world of computer science. As a mathematics professor at Dartmouth College, Kurtz played an important role in making computers accessible to students through the time-sharing system.

Before their innovations, computers were massive, room-sized machines. The use of these computers was largely limited to governments, universities and corporations and to those with specialised knowledge of complex programming languages like FORTRAN and COBOL. Kurtz and Kemeny aimed to make computing easily accessible and in 1964, they introduced BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), a simplified programming language designed for beginners.

Their work also led to the development of the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, which allowed multiple users to access a single computer simultaneously. This was a revolutionary innovation at the time. Their mission to democratise computing laid the groundwork for the widespread use of computers across various sectors and is still appreciated today.