Arthur John Robin Gorell Milner

CSCE 221H-200Gregory Donelan II

Early LifeWas Born in Yealmpton, England on January

13th, 1934Won a scholarship to Eton College in 1946,

where he excelled in mathematicsWon a scholarship to King’s College in

Cambridge in 1952In 1956 he took a course in computer

programming, but he said "Programming was not a very beautiful thing. I resolved I would never go near a computer in my life.“ and stopped pursuing it.

Family LifeHe played the Oboe, and ended up meeting

his wife, Lucy Moor, because of it.Lucy was a violin teacher They had three children, two sons named

Gabriel and Barney, and a daughter named Chloe.

In 1992, Gabriel Died.His wife Lucy also died, in 2010 a few weeks

before he passed away.

In 1960, he joined Ferranti’s computer division to be a programmer. (Ferranti is an electrical engineering and equipment firm)

There he contributed to development of languages such as Algol and Atlas Autocode.

From 1963 until 1968, he lectured on computing and math at City University, London. During his time there, he developed an interest in AI.

In 1968 he took up a senior research assistantship at University College, Swansea, to work with David Cooper, a prominent AI researcher.

This was followed by a research post with the AI project at Stanford University.

His path into Computer Science

LCF (Logic of Computable Functions)A mechanization of Dana Scott’s LCFWas a proof-assistant

It allows the user to interactively “generate formal proofs about computable functions and functionals over a variety of domains.”

Included a sub-goaling facility that allowed the user to divide the search for a proof into searches for smaller sub-proofs,

machine kept track of how to put the pieces back together to construct the full proof.

Also included a simplification mechanism that did a lot of the more routine calculations in proofs.

LCF (continued)Was easy to improve upon thanks to this

architecture, because you just replace the old parts or build upon them.

Proof patterns could be coded as “tactics” which could be used in other proofs. (IE: an induction proof)Automated several steps and allowed common

patterns to be reusedServed as a model for many later proof

assistants for a variety of logics

ML (Meta Language)Was the first language to include polymorphic

type inference with a type-safe exception-handling mechanism

Allowed the use of another proof or tactic if one failed, via the exception mechanism

Bridged theory and practice

CCS (Calculus of Communicating Systems)Set a ‘general theory of concurrency’ for

communicating systemsBased upon his ideas on parallel programs

Deals with the notion of “observational equivalence”If you get two programs that give the same

output, they should be the same program.Also, if you get two programs that give

different output, they should be different programs

Turing Award 1991“For three distinct and complete achievements:1. LCF, the mechanization of Scott's Logic of Computable

Functions, probably the first theoretically based yet practical tool for machine assisted proof construction;

2. ML, the first language to include polymorphic type inference together with a type-safe exception-handling mechanism;

3. CCS, a general theory of concurrency.

In addition, he formulated and strongly advanced full abstraction, the study of the relationship between operational and denotational semantics.”**

** http://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/milner_1569367.cfm

Late Years and LegacyWon the Technical Award from the British

Computer Society (1987) for his work on MLElected a fellow of the Royal Society (1988)Turing Award (1991)Milner died on March 20th, 2010Left behind many new concepts, some of

which are:Pi-CalculusBase work for Bi-Graph Calculus

Sourceshttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituarie

s/robin-milner-pioneering-computer-scientist-1943933.html

http://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/milner_1569367.cfm

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/apr/01/robin-milner-obituary