Robert Dewar

Robert Berriedale Keith Dewar (1945 to 2015) was an American computer scientist and educator who also became a technology company founder and chief executive. He was born in Oxford, England, and moved with his parents to Chicago in 1959. He earned a bachelor's degree and a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Chicago, then worked in computer science at the Illinois Institute of Technology and, from 1975, at New York University, where he was a full professor from 1976 to 2005 and chaired the department. He cofounded the software company AdaCore in 1994, served as its chief executive until 2012 and remained its president until his death. At the Illinois Institute of Technology he created the original SPITBOL compiler, and with Edmond Schonberg he produced GNAT, a free software Ada compiler that forms part of the GNU Compiler Collection. He was an outspoken advocate of freely licensed open-source software and a sought-after expert witness on software copyright and patent questions.