Thomas E. Kurtz *56

At age 96, Tom died of multiple organ failure from sepsis, Nov. 12, 2024, in Lebanon, N.H.
Born Feb. 22, 1928, in Oak Park, Ill., Tom graduated from Knox College in 1950 and earned a Ph.D. in statistics from Princeton in 1956.
His career began as a professor of mathematics at Dartmouth. Trained in mathematics and statistics — the field of computer science barely existed — with department chairman John G. Kemeny, who later became Dartmouth’s president, Tom helped transform computer science from a rarefied preserve of experts into a field that novices could explore and understand. 
Programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL were highly complex and effectively inaccessible to people without advanced training. With the goal of writing a simple programming language, Tom and John created BASIC — Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code — written on Dartmouth’s single computer in 1964.
Overcoming a limitation of the era that only a single user could access a computer at a time, with a workaround dubbed the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, Tom and John enabled multiple users, working at separate terminals, to share the machine.
Tom is survived by his wife of 50 years, Agnes; children from his first marriage, Daniel, Timothy, and Beth; 13 grandchildren; and 25 great-grandchildren.

Graduate alumni memorials are prepared by the APGA.