Pāṇini

Grammarian & mathematician

Created the first known formal generative grammar.

His Aṣṭādhyāyī used roughly 4,000 compact, interacting rules to generate valid Sanskrit forms—an ancient formal system with striking parallels to grammars and compilers.

Connection to the stack: Pāṇini shows that a finite rule system can generate an enormous language.

Place: Gandhāra