John Warnock, inventor of PDF, dies aged 82

Warnock passed away on August 19th, according to Adobe. He was well recognised for developing the ground-breaking technology, officially known as the portable document format, which revolutionised how documents are exchanged and printed.

John Warnock dies: According to Adobe, “John’s brilliance and technological innovations changed the world.” It is a sad day for the Adobe community and the business community for which he has long served as an inspiration.

According to the New York Times, pancreatic cancer was the cause of death.

After working together at Xerox, which they left after it adopted their concept for how to transport documents between a printer and a computer, Warnock and Charles Geschke, who passed away in 2021, created Adobe in 1982.

Warnock started working on an early version of the PDF over ten years later, eventually discovering a method to transfer files digitally while the paper was still intact, according to the Associated Press. Warnock won multiple prizes and gained great recognition for his innovations in printing and document transfer.

Barack Obama presented Warnock and Geschke with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2009. The prize represents the pinnacle of technological excellence and invention in the US.

According to Reuters, Warnock headed Adobe until 2000. Together with Geschke, he served as co-board chairman until 2017.

Warnock was born in the Salt Lake City enclave of Holladay, Utah. He acknowledged in interviews that he was a “mediocre” student who failed algebra his freshman year of high school.

I had an outstanding instructor in high school who, in essence, absolutely turned me around, he said in an interview for the University of Utah alumni publication Continuum in 2013. I got into mathematics at that point because he was so amazing at making you adore it.

According to the AP, Warnock majored in maths while an undergraduate at the University of Utah. Later, from the same university, he earned a PhD in electrical engineering.

Marva Mullins, Warnock’s wife, his three children, and their four grandkids all survive him.