ACADEMIA

Malcolm Cohen, Principal Technical Consultant at NAG, has been selected to receive the prestigious ‘IEC 1906 Award’ for his services to international technical standards.

Malcolm is highly regarded figure in the Fortran community and is a co-author of the book Modern Fortran Explained. He has been a key part of NAG since 1984 when he started out as a Software Engineer.

The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is the world’s leading organisation that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies, including the Fortran programming standard ISO/IEC 1539-1.

The IEC 1906 award acknowledges recent exceptional achievement related to the activities of the IEC which contributes in a significant way to advancing the work of the Commission.

Malcolm won this award for his work as editor of the Fortran standard and for his outstanding technical grasp of the complexities of the Fortran language. The award citation states that he has substantially improved the readability of the standard which in turn will significantly facilitate the task of implementers and users of the new language.

‘I feel very honoured to have received this award for doing something that I love to do’ said Malcolm, after the December award ceremony had taken place in London. ‘There are always new challenges with the Fortran Standard but it is a pleasure to get the best outcomes from the standardization process.’

The award come just as the Numerical Algorithms Group is preparing to release version 5.3 of the NAG Fortran Compiler (derived from the world's first Fortran 90 Compiler which was developed by NAG). It is robust, highly tested, and valued by developers all over the globe for its checking capabilities and detailed error reporting. The Compiler is available on a wide range of Unix platforms as well as under Microsoft Windows. A large number of Fortran 2003 and Fortran 2008 language features are now available as are the most commonly-used features of OpenMP 3.0.