Tldr He wrote a paper that outlined a portable document format: the PDF.
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Prett incredible. Imagine having that on your resume
And then submitting that resume as a 10pt Arial Word doc
Indeed, John Warnock's invention of the PDF format has had a significant impact on the way we interact with documents in the digital age. It's remarkable how something as seemingly simple as a file format can revolutionize desktop publishing and streamline the sharing of documents across different platforms. His contributions to the internet and technology will certainly be remembered.
He made the world better but then he made Adobe.
Maybe it was a short dissertation, but the standard grew huge, it's 986 pages: https://www.iso.org/standard/75839.html
This is the reason there are few pdf editors, and their features vary greatly, it's a huge task to impement that standard from scratch.
He co-invented PDF in '91. His PhD thesis, referenced in the summary, is a solution to the hidden line problem in computer graphics.