FORTRAN (programming language)
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| FORTRAN (programming language) | |
|---|---|
| Name | FORTRAN |
| Paradigm | Procedural, imperative |
| Designer | John Backus |
| Developer | IBM |
| Typing | Static, strong (early versions), implicit typing |
| Year | 1957 |
| Latest release | Fortran 2018 |
| Influences | ALGOL, COBOL, PL/I |
| Influenced | C, C++, Ada, MATLAB, R, Julia |
FORTRAN (programming language) FORTRAN is a high-level, compiled programming language designed for numeric computation and scientific computing. It was created to translate mathematical formulas for use on electronic computers, enabling work in aeronautics, physics, and engineering. The language has evolved through multiple standardization efforts and remains in use across computational science, numerical analysis, and high-performance computing communities.
History
FORTRAN originated in the 1950s at IBM under the leadership of John Backus to provide an alternative to assembly language for the IBM 704 era. Early milestones include the release of FORTRAN I and subsequent revisions driven by needs identified in projects associated with Bell Labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Standardization activities involved organizations such as ANSI and ISO, with working groups that included members from ACM and national laboratories like Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The language’s development paralleled computing advances at institutions such as Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, and Princeton University and influenced products from vendors like DEC and Cray Research.
Language standards and versions
Major standard releases came as FORTRAN 66 (ANSI X3.9-1966) and FORTRAN 77 (ANSI X3.9-1978), followed by modernized standards including Fortran 90, Fortran 95, Fortran 2003, Fortran 2008, and Fortran 2018 under ISO/IEC. Committees comprised representatives from IEEE, European Organization for Nuclear Research, and national standards bodies. Each revision added features motivated by scientific projects at centers such as CERN, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, responding to user communities at universities including Harvard University and Yale University.
Syntax and features
The language introduced constructs for array operations, subroutines, and functions used by researchers at MIT, Princeton University, and University of California, Berkeley. Fortran 90 introduced modules, array slicing, and recursive procedures adopted in software developed at Argonne National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Later standards added object-oriented features and interoperability mechanisms to interface with C libraries used at institutions like NASA and European Southern Observatory. Numeric features include complex arithmetic used in computations at Bell Labs and intrinsic functions relied on by projects at Caltech and Johns Hopkins University.
Implementation and compilers
Compiler development has been driven by vendors and projects including IBM’s compilers for mainframes, Intel Fortran compilers for workstations, and open-source projects like GNU Project’s gfortran. Supercomputing centers such as Argonne National Laboratory and companies like Cray Research developed highly optimizing compilers to exploit vector units and parallelism on systems from CDC and Fujitsu. Interoperability with toolchains from Microsoft and Apple was enabled through vendor-specific compilers and runtime libraries used in collaboration with laboratories like Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Performance and usage domains
FORTRAN has been favored in domains requiring dense linear algebra, computational fluid dynamics, and climate modeling at institutions such as NOAA, NCAR, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, and IPCC-related modeling centers. Libraries like BLAS and LAPACK, developed with contributions from researchers at Bell Labs and University of Tennessee, exploit compiler optimizations on architectures from Intel and AMD. High-performance computing tasks at Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Argonne National Laboratory rely on Fortran codes for scalability on systems such as IBM Blue Gene and contemporary exascale platforms.
Compatibility and legacy code
Extensive legacy codebases exist at universities and national laboratories including MIT, Stanford University, Princeton University, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, making backward compatibility a priority in standards maintained by ISO/IEC. Efforts to modernize code involve tools and projects from organizations like NAG and Netlib, and migration strategies often reference practices from ACM publications. Interfacing legacy Fortran with languages such as C and Python is common in collaborations involving NASA and industrial partners like Siemens and General Electric.
Examples and code samples
Common examples include matrix multiplication and numerical integration routines used in coursework at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and research at California Institute of Technology. A canonical program demonstrating array operations and I/O is widely circulated among users at Argonne National Laboratory and in training at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; numerical libraries like BLAS and LAPACK—developed by contributors from University of Tennessee, Argonne National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory—provide optimized kernels callable from Fortran code.