Heinz Zemanek

The IBM Laboratory Vienna (later known colloquially as the Vienna Lab among the computer software research community) was founded in 1961, as a department of the IBM Laboratory in Böblingen (near Stuttgart), Germany. The original name was "Science Group Vienna," and Prof. Heinz Zemanek served as manager from the very beginning. Zemanek was appointed an IBM Fellow in 1976, and his management responsibility for the Vienna Lab came to an end.

Additionally, he was involved in creating the formal definition of the programming language PL/I.

Zemanek remained active as a lecturer at the Vienna University of Technology, which also had a lecture hall named after him, giving two lectures every year. He was a long-time member of the International Federation for Information Processing, and served as its president from 1971 to 1974.

The Heinz-Zemanek-Preis, an award for extraordinary accomplishments in the field of computer science, was named after him. Zemanek was himself awarded the Kardinal-Innitzer-Preis, a different Austrian award, for his life's accomplishments in 2003. In 2005, he was awarded the Austrian honorary cross for arts and science, first class.