Charles Geschke, a co-founder of the Adobe company, is dead.

Geschke alias Chuck is reported to have died on Friday at the age of 81.

He got his doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh and, after graduating, worked at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center where he met fellow Adobe co-founder John Warnock.

As co-founders of Adobe, Chuck and John Warnock developed groundbreaking software that has revolutionised how people create and communicate,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen wrote in an email.

John Warnock. PHOTO/COURTESY

Geschke is most famous for his invention of the PDF file, which is commonly used to date.

“Their first product was Adobe PostScript, an innovative technology that provided a radical new way to print text and images on paper and sparked the desktop publishing revolution,” Narayen said.

Charles Geschke. PHOTO/COURTESY

He added, “Chuck instilled a relentless drive for innovation in the company resulting in some of the most transformative software inventions, including the ubiquitous PDF, Acrobat, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and Photoshop.”

His wife Nancy said the famous businessman was always proud of his family.

“He was a famous businessman, the founder of a major company in the US and the world, and of course he was very, very proud of that and it was huge achievement in his life, but it wasn’t his focus - really, his family was,” said Nancy Geschke, 78.

Charles Geschke and John Warnock. PHOTO/COURTESY

In 2009, Geschke and Warnock received the National Medal of Technology from then President, Barack Obama for their exemplary innovations.