Tony Hoare, Turing Award winner and pioneer of computer science, passed away on 5 March 2026 at age 92. Known for quicksort, Hoare logic, and contributions to ALGOL, he is remembered here through personal reflections by Jim Miles, who visited Hoare multiple times in Cambridge. The piece shares anecdotes about Hoare's career origins in Classics and Russian linguistics, the famous sixpence wager over quicksort's speed, his habit of sneaking out to the cinema while at Microsoft Research Cambridge, his views on Hollywood's misrepresentation of genius, and a cryptic remark about government computing capabilities far beyond public knowledge.
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