John Edward Warnock (October 6, 1940 – August 19, 2023) was an American computer scientist, inventor, technology businessman, and philanthropist best known for co-founding Adobe Systems Inc., the graphics and publishing software company, with Charles Geschke in 1982.

[13] Warnock noted that for this work he received "the dubious distinction of having written the shortest doctoral thesis in University of Utah history".

[14] In 1976, while Warnock worked at Evans & Sutherland, a Salt Lake City–based computer graphics company, the concepts of the PostScript language were seeded.

[3] They initially hired two computer scientists (Bill Paxton and Doug Brotz) and two electronics designers (Tom Boynton and Dan Putnam) from PARC.

"[3] Adobe's PostScript technology made it possible to print high-resolution text and images from a computer, revolutionizing media and making desktop publishing feasible.

[21] In late 1986, Warnock invented Adobe Illustrator, a computer drawing program that used lines and Bézier curves to render infinitely scalable graphics.

Warnock's document contemplated:[24] Imagine if the IPS (Interchange PostScript) viewer is also equipped with text searching capabilities.

[9][27] In addition to Adobe Systems, he was or had been on the board of directors at ebrary,[28] Hiball,[29] Knight-Ridder, Octavo Corporation, Netscape Communications, and Salon Media Group.

[6][30] His hobbies included photography, skiing, web development, painting, hiking, curation of rare scientific books, and historical Native American objects.

[33] In 2003, Warnock and his wife donated 200,000 shares of Adobe Systems (valued at over $5.7 million)[34] to the University of Utah as the main gift for a new engineering building.

[37] John and Marva have also personally assisted with cataract surgeries led by Geoffrey Tabin on missions to reverse blindness in least developed countries.

[7] They endowed a chair at the Moran Eye Center, which supports work to treat preventable blindness in Utah and around the world.

[39][40] In 1995 Warnock received the University of Utah Distinguished Alumnus Award and in 1999 he was inducted as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.