Professor Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare, or Tony Hoare, has produced a large body of work relating to the definition and design of programming languages (Hoare's Logic), as well as several other innovations that allow computers to perform their tasks more efficiently.

Charles Antony Richard Hoare was born in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), in 1934 to British parents. He attended Oxford University for his studies, but these were interrupted by a period of National Service in the Royal Navy from 1956 to 1958. While in the Royal Navy Hoare studied Russian. In 1959 Hoare received his B.A. from Oxford University, which, due to the peculiarities of the Oxford University system, was converted to an M.A. the following year without Hoare having to undertake any graduate work. Hoare studied philosophy at Oxford, together with Latin and Greek. During his course of study Hoare became interested in the power of mathematical...