I was appalled to find that the mathematical notation on which I had been raised failed to fill the needs of the courses I was assigned, and I began work on extensions to notation that might serve. In particular, I adopted the matrix algebra used in my thesis work, the systematic use of matrices and higher-dimensional arrays (almost) learned in a course in Tensor Analysis rashly taken in my third year at Queen's, and (eventually) the notion of Operators in the sense introduced by Heaviside in his treatment of Maxwell's equations.

"Kenneth E. Iverson", autobiographical sketch from an unfinished work (ca. 2004), on his experience at Harvard with "a Masters program in Automatic Data Processing in 1955; in effect, the first computer science program."