The father of the PDF: Charles Geschke has died

His ideas played a decisive role in shaping digitalization as we know it today. He was known as a visionary of the digital world. Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe, passed away in April 2021 at the age of 81.

Not everyone knows the name Charles Geschke, also known as Chuck. However, almost everyone has used an Adobe product at some point and was therefore indirectly connected to his work.

Charles Geschke co-founded Adobe and is widely regarded as one of the fathers of the Portable Document Format (PDF), developed by Adobe in 1993. The U.S. software developer founded Adobe Systems in 1982 together with John E. Warnock and remained a member of the supervisory board until April 2020.

He initially developed programming languages for printer systems and typesetting machines, and later helped shape PDF. The PDF community mourns the loss of a pioneer who left a lasting mark on information technology and strongly influenced Adobe's engineering culture.

"Don't be afraid. Take a risk. Focus on the people who are going to help you achieve what you want to achieve, because you're not going to do it alone."

-- Charles Geschke: Computer History Museum

Image source: Charles Geschke, Schmiebel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons