Celebrating 70 years of Fortran
- Joe Wallwork
- Last Updated: July 2026
Celebrating 70 years of Fortran
Fortran has been supporting scientific software engineering and critical infrastructure for 70 years. To celebrate this, the Institute of Computing for Climate Science (ICCS) will be holding a 'birthday party' on 1 December 2026 at the Science and Industry Museum, in Manchester, UK. The timing was chosen to align with Computing Insights UK (CIUK) - 'the UK's premier conference for HPC and associated research' - which will be held a short walk away between 2-4 December 2026.
Outline
The birthday party event will have three parts:
- 10:00-13:00 - Small community meetings.
- 14:30-18:15 - Main workshop in the museum conference suite.
- 18:15-20:00 - Drinks reception in the exhibition hall, including a demonstration of the Baby computer.
Workshop programme
The main workshop will be held from 14:30-18:15 in the museum conference suite. It will take the form of a retrospective, with three sections: past, present, and future. The sections are expanded upon below and are also available as a Fortran program!
Past: Keynote address
The main workshop will begin with a keynote address by Damian Rouson from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Damian's talk will act as a retrospective of the past 70 years, covering successes and challenges and motivating attendees to see how far we've come.
Present: Lightning talks
The 'Present' section will begin with cutting birthday cakes to be served during a refreshment break!
There will also be a number of short talks, including sponsor talks on the Fortran work they support, lightning talks on exciting developments underway right now, and lightning talks on community initiatives that are making waves. There will be an opportunity to share any suggestions you have for lightning talk topics or speakers when completing the registration form. Ideally, we would like to hear from early- and mid-career members of the community.
Future: Break-out discussion
The main workshop will culminate in an extended break-out discussion on the next 70 years and what direction we as a community would like the Fortran language and its community to go in. We would like to hear from everyone, from all career stages and from across academia, government, industry, vendors, and funders. There will be an opportunity to share any suggestions you have for discussion topics when completing the registration form.
Registration
Attendance will be free of charge, thanks to the support of our funders and sponsors including Computational Abilities and Knowledge Exchange (CAKE), OpenMP, and ICCS.
A full registration form will be released in due course. In the meantime, register your interest by completing the 'save the date' form.
Whilst it will be a primarily in-person event, there will also be an option to join remotely via Zoom.
More information
If you have any questions about the event, please contact lead organiser Joe Wallwork at jw2423[AT]cam.ac.uk.