Robin Milner
Encyclopedia
Arthur John Robin Gorell Milner FRS FRSE (Robin Milner or A.J.R.G. Milner, born 13 January 1934 near Plymouth
, died 20 March 2010 in Cambridge
) was a prominent British computer scientist
.
, near Plymouth
, England
into a military family. He was awarded a scholarship to Eton College
in 1947, and subsequently served in the Royal Engineers
, attaining the rank of Second Lieutenant. He then enrolled at King's College, Cambridge
, graduating in 1957, Milner first worked as a schoolteacher then as a programmer
at Ferranti
, before entering academia at City University, London
, then Swansea University
, Stanford University
, and from 1973 at the University of Edinburgh
, where he was a co-founder of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science
(LFCS). He returned to Cambridge
as the head of the Computer Laboratory in 1995 from which he eventually stepped down, although he was still at the laboratory. From 2009, Milner was a SICSA Advanced Research Fellow and held (part-time) the Chair of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh
.
Milner died of a heart attack on 20 March 2010 in Cambridge. His wife, Lucy, died shortly before him.
. He developed LCF
, one of the first tools for automated theorem proving
. The language he developed for LCF, ML
, was the first language with polymorphic type inference
and type-safe exception handling
. In a very different area, Milner also developed a theoretical framework for analyzing concurrent systems, the calculus of communicating systems
(CCS), and its successor, the pi-calculus
. At the time of his death, he was working on bigraphs, a formalism for ubiquitous computing
subsuming CCS and the pi-calculus.
in 1988 and received the ACM
Turing Award
in 1991. In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow
of the ACM
. In 2004, the Royal Society of Edinburgh
awarded Milner with a Royal Medal for his "bringing about public benefits on a global scale". In 2008, he was elected a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Engineering
for "fundamental contributions to computer science, including the development of LCF, ML, CCS, and the pi-calculus." http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=02082008
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
, died 20 March 2010 in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
) was a prominent British computer scientist
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
.
Life, education and career
Milner was born in YealmptonYealmpton
Yealmpton is a village in the English county of Devon. It is located on the A379 Plymouth to Kingsbridge road and is about from Plymouth. It derives its name from the River Yealm that flows through the village. Yealmpton is home to a 400 year-old stone cottage, where it is said, a version of the...
, near Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
into a military family. He was awarded a scholarship to Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
in 1947, and subsequently served in the Royal Engineers
Royal Engineers
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army....
, attaining the rank of Second Lieutenant. He then enrolled at King's College, Cambridge
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
, graduating in 1957, Milner first worked as a schoolteacher then as a programmer
Programmer
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...
at Ferranti
Ferranti
Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. Known primarily for defence electronics, the Company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but ceased trading in 1993.The...
, before entering academia at City University, London
City University, London
City University London , is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1894 as the Northampton Institute and became a university in 1966, when it adopted its present name....
, then Swansea University
Swansea University
Swansea University is a university located in Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom. Swansea University was chartered as University College of Swansea in 1920, as the fourth college of the University of Wales. In 1996, it changed its name to the University of Wales Swansea following structural changes...
, Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, and from 1973 at the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
, where he was a co-founder of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science
Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science
The Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science is based in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. It has an international reputation in theoretical computer science, mathematical logic and category theory.- Current :...
(LFCS). He returned to Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
as the head of the Computer Laboratory in 1995 from which he eventually stepped down, although he was still at the laboratory. From 2009, Milner was a SICSA Advanced Research Fellow and held (part-time) the Chair of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
.
Milner died of a heart attack on 20 March 2010 in Cambridge. His wife, Lucy, died shortly before him.
Contributions
Milner is generally regarded as having made three major contributions to computer scienceComputer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
. He developed LCF
LCF theorem prover
Logic for Computable Functions is an interactive automated theorem prover developed at the universities of Edinburgh and Stanford by Robin Milner and others in 1972. LCF introduced the general-purpose programming language ML to allow users to write theorem-proving tactics. Theorems in the system...
, one of the first tools for automated theorem proving
Automated theorem proving
Automated theorem proving or automated deduction, currently the most well-developed subfield of automated reasoning , is the proving of mathematical theorems by a computer program.- Decidability of the problem :...
. The language he developed for LCF, ML
ML programming language
ML is a general-purpose functional programming language developed by Robin Milner and others in the early 1970s at the University of Edinburgh, whose syntax is inspired by ISWIM...
, was the first language with polymorphic type inference
Type inference
Type inference refers to the automatic deduction of the type of an expression in a programming language. If some, but not all, type annotations are already present it is referred to as type reconstruction....
and type-safe exception handling
Exception handling
Exception handling is a programming language construct or computer hardware mechanism designed to handle the occurrence of exceptions, special conditions that change the normal flow of program execution....
. In a very different area, Milner also developed a theoretical framework for analyzing concurrent systems, the calculus of communicating systems
Calculus of Communicating Systems
The Calculus of Communicating Systems is a process calculus introduced by Robin Milner around 1980 and the title of a book describing the calculus. Its actions model indivisible communications between exactly two participants. The formal language includes primitives for describing parallel...
(CCS), and its successor, the pi-calculus
Pi-calculus
In theoretical computer science, the π-calculus is a process calculus originally developed by Robin Milner, and David Walker as a continuation of work on the process calculus CCS...
. At the time of his death, he was working on bigraphs, a formalism for ubiquitous computing
Ubiquitous computing
Ubiquitous computing is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. In the course of ordinary activities, someone "using" ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems...
subsuming CCS and the pi-calculus.
Honors and awards
He was made a Fellow of the Royal SocietyRoyal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
in 1988 and received the ACM
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
Turing Award
Turing Award
The Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the...
in 1991. In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow
Fellow
A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...
of the ACM
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
. In 2004, the Royal Society of Edinburgh
Royal Society of Edinburgh
The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity, operating on a wholly independent and non-party-political basis and providing public benefit throughout Scotland...
awarded Milner with a Royal Medal for his "bringing about public benefits on a global scale". In 2008, he was elected a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Engineering
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...
for "fundamental contributions to computer science, including the development of LCF, ML, CCS, and the pi-calculus." http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=02082008
Selected publications
- A Calculus of Communicating Systems, Robin Milner. Springer-Verlag (LNCS 92), 1980. ISBN 3-540-10235-3
- Communication and Concurrency, Robin Milner. Prentice HallPrentice HallPrentice Hall is a major educational publisher. It is an imprint of Pearson Education, Inc., based in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, USA. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6-12 and higher-education market. Prentice Hall distributes its technical titles through the Safari...
(International Series in Computer Science), 1989. ISBN 0-131-15007-3 - The Definition of Standard ML, Robin Milner, Mads TofteMads TofteMads Tofte is a Danish computer scientist who has contributed in particular to Functional programming and the Standard ML programming language.In April 1999 he was appointed the first managing director of the IT University of Copenhagen...
, Robert Harper, MIT PressMIT PressThe MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
1990 - The Definition of Standard ML (Revised), Robin Milner, Mads TofteMads TofteMads Tofte is a Danish computer scientist who has contributed in particular to Functional programming and the Standard ML programming language.In April 1999 he was appointed the first managing director of the IT University of Copenhagen...
, Robert Harper, David MacQueen, MIT Press 1997. ISBN 0-262-63181-4 - Commentary on Standard ML, Robin Milner, Mads TofteMads TofteMads Tofte is a Danish computer scientist who has contributed in particular to Functional programming and the Standard ML programming language.In April 1999 he was appointed the first managing director of the IT University of Copenhagen...
, MIT Press 1997. ISBN 0-262-63137-7 - Communicating and Mobile Systems: the Pi-Calculus, Robin Milner. Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, 1999. ISBN 0-521-65869-1 - The Space and Motion of Communicating Agents, Robin Milner, Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, 2009. ISBN 9780521738330 - Publications by Robin Milner in DBLPDBLPDBLP is a computer science bibliography website hosted at Universität Trier, in Germany. It was originally a database and logic programming bibliography site, and has existed at least since the 1980s. DBLP listed more than 1.3 million articles on computer science in January 2010...
External links
- Address in Bologna, a short address by Milner on receiving Laurea Honoris Causa in Computer Science from the University of BolognaUniversity of BolognaThe Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna is the oldest continually operating university in the world, the word 'universitas' being first used by this institution at its foundation. The true date of its founding is uncertain, but believed by most accounts to have been 1088...
, summarising some of his main works, 9 July 1997 - Is informatics a science?, conference at ENSÉcole Normale SupérieureThe École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
, 10 December 2007