James (Jim) A. Brown

Inventor of the APL2 program product, Brown is one of the computing world's leading authorities on array technology. He spent nearly 30 years at the center of IBM's array technology efforts, serving as Manager of the group within IBM responsible for APL2, IBM's advanced array-oriented software development environment. APL2 was first available on IBM mainframes in 1980, and was later available under Linux, Unix, and Windows.

IBM's APL2 was based on his Ph.D. Thesis from Syracuse University, "A Generalization of APL". As other vendors were busy developing APL interpreters for new hardware, notably Unix-based microcomputers, APL2 was almost always the standard chosen for new APL interpreter developments. APL2 for IBM mainframe computers was still available as of 2013.

Brown left IBM in 1996 and co-founded SmartArrays, Inc., where he held a senior position in the company for several years. He has received outstanding technical achievement awards from IBM, and he was the 1993 recipient of the Iverson Award from the Association for Computing Machinery.