Robin Milner

Infobox_Scientist
name = Robin Milner


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birth_date = 1934
birth_place = Plymouth, England
death_date =
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field = Computer Science
work_institution = Ferranti
City University, London
Swansea University
Stanford University
University of Edinburgh
University of Cambridge
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known_for = LCF
ML
Calculus of communicating systems
Pi-calculus
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prizes = Turing Award
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Robin Milner FRS (born 1934) is a prominent British computer scientist.

Life, education and career

Milner was born in 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 has subsequently stepped down although he is still at the laboratory.

Contributions

Milner is generally regarded as having made three major contributions to computer science. 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.

Honors and awards

He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1988 and received the ACM Turing Award in 1991. In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the ACM and in 2004 the Royal Society of Edinburgh awarded Milner with a Royal Medal for his "bringing about public benefits on a global scale".

Selected Publications

* [http://www.diku.dk/undervisning/2006-2007/2006-2007_b2_246/milner78theory.pdf A Theory of Type Polymorphism in Programming, Robin Milner, Journal of Computer and System Sciences, August 1980]

Books

* A calculus of communicating systems, Robin Milner. Springer (LNCS 92), 1980. ISBN 3-540-10235-3
* Communication and Concurrency, Robin Milner. Prentice Hall (International Series in Computer Science), 1989. ISBN 0-131-15007-3
* The Definition of Standard ML, Robin Milner, Mads Tofte, Robert Harper, MIT Press 1990
* The Definition of Standard ML (Revised), Robin Milner, Mads Tofte, Robert Harper, David MacQueen, MIT Press 1997. ISBN 0-262-63181-4
* Commentary on Standard ML, Robin Milner, Mads Tofte, MIT Press 1997. ISBN 0-262-63137-7
* Communicating and Mobile Systems: the Pi-Calculus, Robin Milner. Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-521-65869-1

References

* " [http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=3797 Proof, Language, and Interaction: Essays in Honour of Robin Milner] ", edited by Gordon Plotkin, Colin Stirling and Mads Tofte. The MIT Press, 2000. ISBN 0-262-16188-5.
* The Royal Society of Edinburgh: "Royal Gold Medals for Outstanding Achievement" (2004 press release). http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/rse_press/2004/medals.htm
* [http://www.fairdene.com/picalculus/robinmilner.html A brief biography of and speech by Robin Milner]

External links

* [http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rm135/ Milner's Cambridge homepage]
* [http://www.cs.unibo.it/icalp/Lauree_milner.html Address in Bologna] , a short address by Milner on receiving Laurea Honoris Causa in Computer Science from the University of Bologna, summarising some of his main works, 9 July 1997
* [http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/users/mfb21/interviews/milner/ An interview with Robin Milner] by Martin Berger, 3 September 2003
* [http://north.ecc.edu/alsani/ct01(1-4)/msg00041.html A review of "Proof, Language, and Interaction"] , a book on computer science dedicated to Milner and covering many areas of his work
* [http://www.diffusion.ens.fr/data/audio/2007_12_10_milner.mp3 Is informatic a science?] , conference at ENS, 10 december 2007

Persondata
NAME= Milner, Robin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= Computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH= 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH= Plymouth, England
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=