Charles Goldfarb

Charles F. Goldfarb, (born November 26, 1939) is known as the father of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)^[1] and grandfather of HTML^[2] and the World Wide Web. He co-invented the concept of markup languages.^[3]

In 1969 Charles Goldfarb, leading a small team at IBM,^[4] developed the first markup language, called Generalized Markup Language,^[5] or GML. Goldfarb coined the term GML,^[6] an initialism for the three researchers, Charles Goldfarb, Ed Mosher and Ray Lorie, who worked on the project.^[7]

In 1974, Goldfarb designed SGML^[8] and subsequently wrote the first SGML parser, ARC-SGML.^[9] SGML facilitates the sharing of machine readable documents for large projects. SGML was used by the military and aerospace,^[10] and industrial publishing.^[11] Goldfarb continued working to turn SGML into the ISO 8879 standard,^[12] and served as its editor in the standardization committee.

Goldfarb held a J.D. from Harvard Law School.^[13] After working at IBM's Almaden Research Center,^[14] he was an independent consultant based in Belmont, California.^[15]

• The SGML Handbook, Oxford University Press (1991), ISBN 0-19-853737-9
• SGML Buyer's Guide, Prentice Hall (1998), ISBN 0-13-681511-1
• XML Handbook, Prentice Hall (1998), ISBN 0-13-081152-1

• Charles Goldfarb: The Markup Pioneer Who Revolutionized Digital Documents Retrieved June 5, 2025
• XML Opportunities Knocking (Interview Part 2)