On August 27, 2026, Kristen Nygaard would have turned 100 years.

On this occasion, Aarhus University will mark the day and pay tribute to Kristen Nygaard for his contributions to computer science.

Kristen Nygaard has made major contributions within the fields Object-Oriented Programming and Participatory Design.

Kristen Nygaard also had a major influence for computer science/information science at Aarhus University. This started when he was a visiting professor in the early seventies and since then he worked with people from the department until his death in 2002. The building on the corner of Helsingforsgade and Finlandsgade at Katrinebjerg in Aarhus is named the Nygaard-building.

Together with Ole-Johan Dahl, Kristen Nygaard, invented/developed the SIMULA languages, which provided the main concepts for object-oriented programming.

SIMULA provided the inspiration for several object-oriented programming languages including Smalltalk, C++, Eiffel, Java and C# – and object-oriented programming is now the dominating programming perspective.

In the early seventies, Nygaard carried out a major project with the Norwegian Iron and Metal Workers Union on how to prepare the union members for the introduction of computers in working life. A key aspect of this was adding the interests of the employees as a legitimate – and necessary – concern in development and introduction of IT-systems, and in the teaching materials developed in the project

This project was the starting point and inspiration for development of the field participatory design, which has since played an important role in systems development research – particularly in Scandinavia.