Tony Hoare has died

267 points by nextos 21 hours ago on hackernews | 33 comments

Pardon if I’m dumb/missed something: Is Tony Hoare dead? I see no news anywhere.

The blog author says that Jonathan Bowen informed them, so it is possible it hasn't been officially announced.

I can't find any news either, but that is the claim of this submission.

  > Jonathan Bowen informed me of Tony Hoare's death on Thursday, March 5th. (translated from French)

The main reason to find it surprising is that it's now 4 days since then, I'd have expected something to have been published besides this page.

tibbar | 21 hours ago

That is the claim of the post. I also don't see confirmation elsewhere

[OP] nextos | 21 hours ago

There is very little information around, this is the most authoritative post I could find. There are some comments on X as well.

According to this blogpost, he sadly passed away last Thursday, March 5th.

jlhawn | 21 hours ago

There were a few recent edits about this on Tony Hoar's Wikipedia page which were reverted because there was no substantial evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tony_Hoare&action...

[OP] nextos | 21 hours ago

It was edited again a few minutes ago and now displays Sunday, March 8th as his date of death.

: codethief | 20 hours ago
And it's gone again!

spooneybarger | 21 hours ago

Yes. He died last week.

rvz | 21 hours ago

RIP Tony Hoare.

Legendary Turing Award Winner.

behehebd | 21 hours ago

Any link to information?

: spooneybarger | 20 hours ago
Came through personal contact who is close to the family.

hinkley | 21 hours ago

His Wikipedia page is still worded in the present tense. People tend to be johnny on the spot about that so maybe not?

intuitionist | 20 hours ago

Sadly it seems to be true. Heard it late last week from a coworker in a position to know.

butterisgood | 21 hours ago

Wikipedia seems to say he passed yesterday.

: wging | 21 hours ago
But there are no citations on any of the edits claiming this, and there were two incompatible dates claimed (March 5, March 8).
: hinkley | 21 hours ago
At this exact moment it looks like those edits may have been reverted.

reenorap | 21 hours ago

Once verified, I definitely think the creator of Quicksort deserves a black bar.

: hinkley | 21 hours ago
Tony Hoare documented almost every form of concurrency primitive that we have in modern software. Pretty much everything prior to Rust's ownership semantics was written down in some form or under another name by Tony in the early 1970's.
: jonstewart | 20 hours ago
Yes, make it black.
: jacquesm | 20 hours ago
It goes a lot further than Quicksort.

bitwize | 21 hours ago

Time for a black band.

hinkley | 21 hours ago

@dang is there such a thing as a double black bar? Because we need one for Tony.

toomuchtodo | 20 hours ago

Tags do nothing, email the mods if desired. Bottom bar has deets (“contact”).

godd2 | 20 hours ago

What is a black bar?

: john_strinlai | 20 hours ago
when a significant figure in the tech/science community dies, hn will sometimes place a thin black bar at the top of the page in memoriam

pyuser583 | 20 hours ago

Wikipedia is reporting him as deceased, but there’s a bit of an editing war going on. No source is cited for his death, and and it’s going back and forth.

EdNutting | 19 hours ago

This post appears to have been hidden from the front page of HN?

: dang | an hour ago
Yes, it was submitted before the news had been confirmed. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47327440.

zombot | 14 hours ago

No black band at the op of HN? Is that only for rich people?

: dang | an hour ago
I hope you've noticed which story has been at the top of HN all day today, and how lovely the comments in it are.

penguin_booze | 12 hours ago

I found this link elsewhere. But then I went to his wikipedia page; it doesn't seem to have any mention of date of demise.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare

dang | an hour ago

I've merged the comments into this thread now: Tony Hoare has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47324054.

Normally we'd try to re-up the earliest submission of a story, but in this case the article had little information, while the other post is nicely personal and detailed. I've left below the comments which were (understandably) debating whether the news was true or not.

(Just to be clear: this is not a criticism! It's an important story, nextos is a fine contributor, and the submission was entirely understandable.)