John Warnock, a computer graphics innovator who helped create the PDF and co-founded Adobe, has died at the age of 82.
“It is a sad day for the Adobe community and the industry for which he has been an inspiration for decades,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said in a statement. “John’s brilliance and innovations left an indelible mark on Adobe, the technology industry and the world.”
The company said he died Saturday surrounded by family. The location and cause of death were not disclosed.
Originally from the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Warnock developed an interest and skill in mathematics in high school and went on to earn an undergraduate degree in math and a doctorate in computer science at the University of Utah.
“I had an amazing teacher in high school who, essentially, completely turned me around,” Warnock told Continuum, the school’s alumni magazine, in 2013. “He was really good at getting you to love mathematics, and that’s when I got into it.”
In the 1960s, Warnock worked at IBM on the military’s internet precursor. In the 1970s, he moved to Silicon Valley to work on interactive computer graphics and met Charles Geschke. In 1982, the two left to start Adobe.
One of their first developments, the programming language PostScript, revolutionized desktop publishing by making it easier to print text with graphics.
Their company took off after inventing the PDF, the ubiquitous electronic file format that has all but replaced paper in legal and business documents.
Before Warnock stepped down as CEO in 2000, the company also debuted groundbreaking software like Illustrator and Photoshop. Warnock remained on the board of directors until his death.
He is survived by his wife and their three children.
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