Creator of the pointer variable in programming languages and contributor to PL/I, Lawson has been active in the field of computing since 1958 with broad international experience in industrial and academic environments. He received the Bachelor of Science degree from Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1959 and the PhD degree from the Royal Technical University, Stockholm in 1983.
The work on the pointer variable concept was performed during the years 1964–65. At that time Lawson was employed by the International Business Machines Corporation. After the invention of the pointer variable and its integration into PL/I, he authored the first professional publication of these concepts entitled "PL/I List Processing," which appeared in the June 1967 issue of the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery.
As with many pioneering inventions, the pointer variable has been an important enabler. It enabled programmers to effectively create higher level language programs to solve many complex problems in, amongst other areas, computer graphics and systems programs such as compilers and operating systems. Unquestionably the pointer variable concept, later adapted from PL/I to various programming languages such as C, Pascal, C++, and Ada, had a major impact upon the field of computing.
