John M. Scholes
John Morley Scholes (1948–2019) was a British computer scientist. In his professional career he was devoted to the development of the programming language APL. He was the designer and implementer of direct functions. Personal John Scholes was born on 24 April 1948 to Gerry and Amy Scholes. He grew up in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, and attended Leamington College for Boys between 1960 and 1966. Between 1966 and 1969 he attended the University of Manchester and received a BSc (with honours) in mathematics. Scholes enjoyed poetic and romantic qualities in his life. Apart from APL, he also found beauty in nature, opera, the music of Tom Waits, the literature of James Joyce, the poetry of W.B. Yeats. He was a member of the Joyce society in Dublin. In 2013, he and his wife Flora Dowling went to Sligo to the W.B. Yeats Summer School and met the poet Seamus Heaney the summer before Heaney died. The APL side and the romantic side often met: The Depth-First Search video (below) was recorded at dawn on the summer solstice of 2014, with birdsong in the air, while he and his wife were on a 21-day Zen retreat in France led by Thích