Gordon Plotkin

Gordon David Plotkin (born 9 September 1946)^[1] is a theoretical computer scientist in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Plotkin is probably best known for his introduction of structural operational semantics (SOS) and his work on denotational semantics. In particular, his notes on A Structural Approach to Operational Semantics were very influential.^[9][10] He has contributed to many other areas of computer science.^{[11][12][13][14][15][16][17]}

Education

Plotkin was educated at the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh, gaining his Bachelor of Science degree in 1967^[1] and PhD in 1972^[3] supervised by Rod Burstall.^[2]

Career and research

Plotkin has remained at Edinburgh, and was, with Burstall and Robin Milner, a co-founder of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science (LFCS).^{[18][19][20][21]} His former doctoral students include Luca Cardelli,^[4] Philippa Gardner,^[5] Doug Gurr,^[6] Eugenio Moggi,^[7] and Lǐ Wèi.^[8][2]

Awards and honours

Plotkin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1992, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE)^[when?] and is a Member of the Academia Europæa^[22] and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[23] He is also a winner of the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. Plotkin received the Milner Award in 2012 for "his fundamental research into programming semantics with lasting impact on both the principles and design of programming languages."^[24] His nomination for the Royal Society reads:

References

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3. ^ Plotkin, Gordon David (1972). Automatic methods of inductive inference (PhD). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/6656
4. ^ Cardelli, Luca (1982). An algebraic approach to hardware description and verification (PhD). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/13308
5. ^ Gardner, Philippa (1992). Representing logics in type theory (PhD). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/14888
6. ^ Gurr, Douglas John (1990). Semantic frameworks for complexity (PhD). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/13968. OCLC 475827463
7. ^ Moggi, Eugenio (1999). The partial lambda calculus (PhD). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/419
8. ^ Wèi, Lǐ (1983). An operational approach to semantics and translation for programming languages (PhD). hdl:1842/6636
9. ^ Crary, Karl & Harper, Robert (2007). "Syntactic Logical Relations for Polymorphic and Recursive Types". Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science. 172: 259. doi:10.1016/j.entcs.2007.02.010
10. ^ Curien, Pierre-Louis (April 2022), "Semantics and syntax, between computer science and mathematics", p. 2
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15. ^ Mitchell, J. C. & Plotkin, G. D. (1988). "Abstract types have existential type". ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems. 10 (3): 470. doi:10.1145/44501.45065. S2CID 1222153
16. ^ Abadi, M. N.; Burrows, M.; Lampson, B.; Plotkin, G. (1993). "A calculus for access control in distributed systems". ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems. 15 (4): 706. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.72.3756. doi:10.1145/155183.155225. hdl:1842/207. S2CID 13260508
17. ^ "Symposium for Gordon Plotkin". www.lfcs.inf.ed.ac.uk
18. ^ Plotkin, G. D. (1975). "Call-by-name, call-by-value and the λ-calculus". Theoretical Computer Science. 1 (2): 125–159. doi:10.1016/0304-3975(75)90017-1
19. ^ Plotkin, G. D. (2004). "The origins of structural operational semantics". The Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming. 60-61: 3–15. doi:10.1016/j.jlap.2004.03.009
20. ^ A Structural Approach to Operational Semantics by G.D. Plotkin (1981)
21. ^ Program Verification and Semantics: Further Work Archived 26 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine (2004)
22. ^ Hoffmann, Ilire Hasani, Robert. "Academy of Europe: Plotkin Gordon". www.ae-info.org
23. ^ "New Members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences"
24. ^ "- Royal Society". royalsociety.org