According to a blog post by Joe Wallwork of the Institute of Computing for Climate Science at the University of Cambridge, one month from 15 October 2026 marks seventy years since the first Fortran manual was published, making it an extremely well‑established programming language for scientific computing.
The post notes that over Fortran’s seven decades of usage it has supported critical infrastructure and technological advances in fields such as nuclear engineering, weather and climate forecasting, and materials science, and that Fortran continues to be the go‑to language in these domains and others.
To celebrate this milestone, the Institute of Computing for Climate Science will host a ‘Celebrating 70 years of Fortran’ event at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, United Kingdom, on 1 December 2026. The main workshop will run from 14:30 to 18:15 in the museum conference suite and will be followed by an evening drinks reception in the exhibition hall, which will include a demonstration of the 1940’s experimental computer known as ‘Baby’.
The workshop is structured as a retrospective: a keynote address by Damian Rouson of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will look back on how far Fortran has come in the past 70 years; lightning talks will cover current exciting developments and community initiatives; and an open breakout discussion will look forward to the next 70 years. Opportunities are available to submit lightning talks and posters, as well as to propose breakout discussion topics.
Sponsorship for the event comes from platinum sponsors AMD and Dell Technologies, and bronze sponsors CAKE, OpenMP, and the Institute of Computing for Climate Science itself. Attendance is free of charge, thanks to the support of funders and sponsors. Registration is via the form at https://forms.gle/NjXfManJWmwLX7sc7 and will close on 9 November 2026. While the event is primarily in‑person, a remote option via Zoom will also be provided.
Further details, including the full programme and instructions for submitting lightning talks and posters, can be found on the event webpage. The blog post was also published on the CAKE website at https://www.cake.ac.uk/news/fortran-birthday/.