Peter Naur (born 25 October 1928) is a Danish pioneer in computer science and Turing award winner. His last name is the N in the BNF notation (Backus-Naur form), used in the description of the syntax for most programming languages. He contributed to the creation of the ALGOL 60 programming language.He began his career as an astronomer for which he received his PhD degree in 1957, but his encounter with computers led to a change of profession.