Robert Berriedale Keith Dewar, English-born American computer scientist and educator, Died at 70

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Robert Berriedale Keith Dewar was born on June 21, 1945 and died June 30, 2015.

He was an English-born American computer scientist and educator.

He helped to develop software languages and compilers and was an outspoken advocate of freely licensed open source software.

R Dewar was a founder, CEO and president of AdaCore software company.

Robert was also an enthusiastic amateur performer and musician, especially with the Village Light Opera Group in New York City.

Michael J. S. Dewar and Mary Dewar, name before marriage, ‘Williamson’.

In the year 1959, Robert moved with his parents from England to Chicago, Illinois, when his father accepted a teaching job at the University of Chicago.

Dewar received his B.S. at the University of Chicago in 1964, and his Ph.D. in chemistry, also from the University of Chicago, in 1968.

He began to work with computers during graduate school.

Robert was the first Assistant Professor of Information Science and later Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) from 1968 to 1975, before becoming Research Associate Professor of Computer Science at New York University (NYU) in 1975, where he was Full Professor of Computer Science from 1976 to 2005, becoming chair of the department.

Robert was Chairman of IFIP Working Group 2.1 from the year 1978 to 1983 and Associate Director of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences from 1994 to 1997. Until his death, he was President of AdaCore, which he co-founded in 1994, also serving as its CEO until 2012.

He was an outspoken advocate of freely licensed open source software and an expert in copyright and patent law for software.

Robert was in demand as a speaker at conferences and expert witness in legal actions.

His software contributions include; the original SPITBOL compiler together with Ken Belcher in 1971, and Macro SPITBOL with Tony McCann in 1974, involved with the Ada programming language produce GNAT, a free-software compiler for Ada that forms part of the GNU Compiler Collection and was involved in the design of Algol 68.

Robert Berriedale Keith Dewar passed away at 70 yrs old.