Alick Glennie’s early-1950s Autocode for the Manchester Mark 1 explored whether programmers could write a more intelligible notation and let a translating program produce machine instructions.
ALGOL 60 combined an international language-design process with block structure, lexical scope, recursive procedures and a formal syntax notation that influenced generations of later programming languages.
Konrad Zuse designed Plankalkül during and immediately after the Second World War as a notation for expressing general computational plans, decades before the language was fully published or implemented.
COBOL emerged from a committee effort to make business programs readable and portable across competing computer manufacturers, creating one of computing's most durable language ecosystems.
Python grew from Guido van Rossum's work at CWI into a language whose readability, interactive use and broad standard library made it unusually adaptable across domains.
Java evolved from Sun's Oak project into a language and virtual-machine platform built around portability, managed memory and networked software.
FORTRAN did more than introduce convenient mathematical notation. Its compiler proved that a high-level language could produce code efficient enough for serious scientific work.
LISP gave symbolic computation a language whose programs and data shared a common representation, reshaping artificial intelligence and the theory of programming.