Pioneering Apple Engineer Bill Atkinson died at the age of 74.

Bill Atkinson, an engineer who played a key role in the development of the Macintosh and other groundbreaking Apple products, has passed away from pancreatic cancer.

After Atkinson’s family Announced on Facebook that he had passed awayprovided by Steven Levy of Wired Summary of Atkinson’s many achievements As Apple employee number 51. In addition to the Macintosh, the Apple projects he created or contributed to have contributed to include LISA computers, QuickDraw, The Magic Slate (the iPad precursor), and Hypercards (the World Wide Web precursor).

Atkinson, 74, eventually became passionate about nature photography, writing on Facebook when he was diagnosed with cancer last year, “already had a surprising and wonderful life.”

in x’s postApple CEO Tim Cook described Atkinson as “a true visionary that will inspire us forever with creativity, mind and groundbreaking work on Mac. Written by John Gruber of Daring Fireball “No exaggeration,” Atkinson said, “maybe he was the best computer programmer he’d ever lived in.”