The software giant said that Warnock died at home on 19 August, surrounded by his family.
Warnock and his colleague, the late Dr Charles ‘Chuck’ Geschke, set up Adobe in 1982. The duo met while working at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Centre, where they developed a page description language. Subsequently, the duo decided to strike out on their own.
Adobe’s first product was PostScript, the page description language that enabled the desktop publishing revolution and that had a transformative effect on the printing industry.
Adobe chair and CEO Shantanu Narayen shared a warm personal tribute to Warnock, and described him as “one of the greatest inventors in our generation with significant impact on how we communicate in words, images and videos”.
“While the impact that his innovations have had are countless, it is his indomitable spirit, passion and belief in building a company with strong values that has impacted all of us who have had the good fortune of working at Adobe. John was incredibly insightful on which technologies would delight customers as well as create business value. John and his wife, Marva, who is a graphics artist, used our products constantly and set the standard for customer empathy,” Narayen said.
“My interactions with John over the past 25 years have been the highlight of my professional career. At breakfasts with John and Chuck, we would imagine the future, however, it was our varied conversations on rare books, art, world history and politics that gave me unique insight into John, who was truly a renaissance man (we also loved rooting jointly for the Warriors!). While he was my role model and mentor, I am most grateful to count him as a friend.”
Richard Patterson, who founded Hyphen, an early UK developer of clone PostScript RIPs, also paid tribute. He said: “John was one of the nicest and smartest guys ever, period. I greatly admired and liked him.
“The positive and transformational effect John and Chuck had on the prepress industry cannot be overstated. John was a brilliant computer scientist and a true pioneer in the field of computer graphics.
“He was also a lover of good food, fine wine and rare books; he was wonderfully entertaining and truly engaging company. The computer science world has lost another true giant of the field.”
Warnock received many awards during his lifetime, including the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, one of the USA’s highest honours bestowed on scientists, engineers and inventors. It was awarded to him by President Barack Obama in 2008.
Warnock retired as Adobe CEO in 2000 and became co-chairman with Geschke until 2017. He remained on the Adobe board of directors to the end.
He is survived by his wife Marva and his three children.
Today, Adobe employs more than 29,000 people worldwide and the company is valued at $231.6bn (£181.5bn).
