Fortran was the first high-level programming language developed for scientific and engineering calculations.
John Backus led the IBM team that created Fortran in the 1950s. The language’s name comes from “formula translation,” reflecting its purpose of expressing mathematical formulas in a form that could be compiled into machine code.
IBM released the first Fortran compiler in 1957. At a time when programmers often wrote assembly language by hand, Fortran offered a more productive way to express numerical algorithms. Its success helped establish the practical importance of optimizing compilers.
Fortran has evolved through many standards, including Fortran 77, Fortran 90, and later revisions. It remains important in high-performance scientific computing, numerical simulation, weather modeling, engineering, and supercomputing. Modern Fortran is substantially different from the earliest versions, but it preserves the language’s long-standing numerical focus.