There aren't many computer algorithms famous enough to get their very own birthday party, but Quicksort is one of them. Invented by the computer scientist Tony Hoare and published in July 1961, the algorithm's task is to put lists of things into the correct order: numbers in numerical order, words into alphabetical order, or dates into chronological oder. It does this so successfully, it is still hailed as one of the best sorting algorithms and implemented in many programming languages and libraries.