Peter Naur helped define ALGOL 60 and edited its language report. The revised report specifies both the syntax and operational meaning of expressions, statements, blocks and procedures. Its explicit separation of formal syntax from explanatory semantics made the language definition independent of any one compiler.[ref]
A nested block, for example, can declare a local name without exposing it throughout the entire program. The definition must specify which declaration an occurrence denotes and how procedure parameters behave. Such details make scope and parameter passing part of a language's semantics rather than conventions guessed from examples. ACM's award announcement credits Naur's report editing, language-definition work and compiler contributions.[ref]
Figure 1.
Portrait of Peter Naur
. Eriktj, via Wikimedia Commons; CC BY-SA 2.5. Source.

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