He invented PDF - Adobe co-founder Dr. John Warnock dies

Adobe, which owns products such as Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Flash, announced Saturday that Adobe co-founder John Warnock died at the age of 82. According to the Associated Press, Dr. John Warnock died on August 19, accompanied by his wife Marva Warnock and their three children. The cause and location of death were not released. Prior to this, another inventor of PDF, Adobe co-founder Charles Gershke, passed away in April 2021. So far, the two original founders of Adobe have passed away, and an era has come to an end.

Adobe PostScript, developed by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, revolutionized the book publishing industry

John Warnock is a well-known computer scientist, inventor and technology entrepreneur in the United States. He has won the National Technology and Innovation Award, the Computer Entrepreneur Award issued by the IEEE Computer Society, the American Electronics Association Achievement Award, and his contributions to information science and technology. Received the Marconi Award and other honors for his contributions to communications.

Warnock was born into a wealthy family in Holladay, a suburb of Salt Lake City, the son of a well-known local lawyer. Warnock earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a doctorate in electrical engineering or computer science at the University of Utah after a high school teacher made him fall in love with math, according to Warnock himself. And solved Jacobsonian radicals during my master's degree. In his doctoral dissertation in 1969, Warnock invented the Warnock algorithm for hidden surface determination.

Since then, Warnock has participated in the development of the predecessor of the Internet built by the US Department of Defense, and worked on interactive computer graphics for Xerox. After persuading Xerox management to commercialize the InterPress graphics language, Warnock and Geschke founded Adobe and created PostScript, which greatly reduced the space required for storing pictures on computers.

From left to right: Charles Geschke, Steve Jobs , John Warnock

In the 1980s, Jobs was facing competition with Microsoft and IBM, and he persuaded Warnock to transform Adobe into a software company and sell licenses to Apple. In 1985, Apple's LaserWriter printer was the first to feature PostScript. This gives Apple a strong competitive edge. A series of cooperation with Apple has also made Adobe the first company in the history of Silicon Valley to be profitable in its first year.

Warnock (center) and Charles (left) receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Barack Obama during a White House ceremony in 2008

Warnock was the CEO of Adobe until 2000. During Warnock's tenure as CEO, Adobe created industry-standard software for business, graphic design, photography, video editing, recording, etc., for computer text, images and video communication had a major impact.

For a long time, as the co-founder and leader of Adobe and an important creator of Adobe software, John Warnock has made important contributions to Adobe's development and strategic planning. His death will definitely affect Adobe's innovation and product development direction.