RIP: Robin Milner

http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/pipermail/types-list/2010/001478.html

by fogus • 16 years ago

129 14 16 years ago

lists.seas.upenn.edu

fogus• 16 years ago

More information on his incredible contributions to computer science: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Milner

jcl• 16 years ago

One of the references in the Wikipedia article is this long interview covering the major points of his life and work:

http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/users/mfb21/interviews/m...

gdp• 16 years ago

It's almost impossible to over-state his contributions to computer science, particularly within programming languages, theorem proving and concurrency theory. I never met him, but I have followed and admired his work for some time, and this is a real loss to the community.

sriram_sun• 16 years ago

From Wikipedia .. Doctoral advisor None, as Milner never did a PhD[1] Doctoral students - about 19

troystribling• 16 years ago

I purchased 'Communicating and Mobil Systems: the Pi-Calculus' last week. http://www.amazon.com/Communicating-Mobile-Systems-Robin-Mil.... This is the first computing theory book I have read. It's quite readable and very well written.

morphir• 16 years ago

Is it so that CS-books face an increase in value when the author have a passed away? Kinda like with art, where the author/artist never sees the pleasure of economical benefits during his/hers lifespan. But when death occurs -- that will be the ultimate marketing effort as we can take the time and sum up a person intellectual contributions....hmm..does this wanna make you work harder or what?

hackermom• 16 years ago

Died from sorrow, not from old age.

fadmmatt2• 16 years ago

For anyone that uses an ML (e.g. OCaml), Haskell or Scala, Milner was responsible for the Hindley-Milner type system and inference algorithm that sits at the foundation of these languages.

It ignited a wave of research into type theory that continues to this day, yet in many ways, Hindley-Milner is still the most significant contribution to the field.

I remember reading his original paper on polymorphic typing for my qualifiers and being struck by the elegance and approachability of his writing.

Well worth a read.

j_baker• 16 years ago

Any chance you could post some info about the paper? I've been itching to learn more about how type inferencing (especially polymorphic type inferencing) works.

EDIT: I don't know if it's the paper you were referring to, but I did find this: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/pag/6.883/readings/p207-damas.pd...

fadmmatt2• 16 years ago

Milner, Robin (1978), "A Theory of Type Polymorphism in Programming", Jcss 17: 348–375

I don't know if there's a free copy online anywhere.

The Damas-Milner paper is the sequel; it presents an alternate algorithm for type inference.

Benjamin Pierce's "Orange Book" is one of the best references now.

dunk010• 16 years ago

That is sad news.

I guess the annual lecture at Edinburgh will be a memorial lecture now http://www.lfcs.inf.ed.ac.uk/events/milner-lecture.

abless• 16 years ago

How very, very sad! He gave us a lecture just two years ago...

reginaldo• 16 years ago

Robin Milner was indeed one of a kind. One of the Great Masters of Computing, for sure. I'm currently taking a class on models for Concurrent Computing, and the first subject is Milner's CCS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_communicating_syste...

The way he thinks about processes, communication and synchronization is just beautiful. When I was able to "prove" that the implementation of a two-bit buffer as a chain of two one-bit buffers actually behaves as specified, it was as enlightening as when I first saw a higher order function in Scheme.

RIP: Robin Milner

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