A tribute to Jean Ichbiah

January 27th, 2007 at 23:39 · Filed Under Ada 

Jean Ichbiah? Who is he?

Jean David Ichbiah was born March 25, 1940. He was the chief designer of the Ada programming language from 1977-1983. During that time, he worked as a member of the Programming Research division at CII-Honey Bull (CII-HB) at Louveciennes, France. He had been chairman of Simula User’s Group and was one of the founding member of IFIP WG 2.4 on System Implementation Language.

CII-HB’s proposal won the US DoD (Department of Defense) contract to design a new programming language. After Ada was selected, he left CII-HB and founded Alsys Corporation in La Celle-Saint-Cloud which continued language definition work on Ada and later went into the Ada compiler business. Alsys first released a PC version of Ada compiler in 1983 making Ada compiler more affordable in PC programming. Ichbiah later moved into the Waltham, Massachusetts subsidiary of Alsys.

Ichbiah later started the Textware company, which sells text entry software for PDA and tablet PCs as well as text entry software for medical transcription on PCs.

Jean Ichbiah was a member of the France Legion of Honor and the French Academy of Sciences and received a Certificate of Distinguished Service from the DoD for his work on Ada.

He died of complications of brain tumor and a fall, on January 26 2007.

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2 Responses to “A tribute to Jean Ichbiah”

  • Jonah Kalb on February 17th, 2007 5:25 1

    Are you the Adrian Hoe, (formerly?) of Lexington MA who played on the Red Sox little league team (which I was managing at the time.)

    If so, we have one more thing in common, because I not only worked with Jean at Alsys in Waltham, but (less so) with Textware in Burlington, and was personal friends with both Jean and Marianne. I lunched with Jean once a month for the last five years, and visited him several times since his brain tumor. Love to hear from you. JK

  • Adrian Hoe on February 17th, 2007 9:17 2

    No. I believe that’s another Adrian Hoe. Does he do Ada too? Were (Are) you working with Ada too?

    Thanks for stopping by. Keep in touch!

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