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1 Introduction Logic Activities in Europ e y Yuri Gurevich Intro duction During Fall thanks to ONR I had an opp ortunity to visit a fair numb er of West Eu rop ean centers of logic research I tried to learn more ab out logic investigations and appli cations in Europ e with the hop e that my exp erience may b e useful to American researchers This rep ort is concerned only with logic activities related to computer science and Europ e here means usually Western Europ e one can learn only so much in one semester The idea of such a visit may seem ridiculous to some The mo dern world is quickly growing into a global village There is plenty of communication b etween Europ e and the US Many Europ ean researchers visit the US and many American researchers visit Europ e Neither Americans nor Europ eans make secret of their logic research Quite the opp osite is true They advertise their research From ESPRIT rep orts the Bulletin of Europ ean Asso ciation for Theoretical Computer Science the Newsletter of Europ ean Asso ciation for Computer Science Logics publications of Europ ean Foundation for Logic Language and Information publications of particular Europ ean universities etc one can get a go o d idea of what is going on in Europ e and who is doing what Some Europ ean colleagues asked me jokingly if I was on a reconnaissance mission Well sometimes a cow wants to suckle more than the calf wants to suck a Hebrew proverb It is amazing however how dierent computer science is esp ecially theoretical com puter science in Europ e and the US American theoretical computer science centers heavily around complexity theory The two prime American theoretical conferences ACM Sym p osium on Theory of Computing STOC and IEEE Foundation of Computer Science Con ference FOCS are largely devoted to complexity theory in a wider sense of the term That do es not exclude logic As a matter of fact imp ortant logic results have b een published in those conferences However STOC and FOCS logic pap ers b elong as a rule to branches of logic intimately related to complexity Finite mo del theory is a go o d example of that see Fagin Gurevich and esp ecially Immerman The dierence b etween theoretical computer science and the rest of computer science and computer engineering is relatively well delineated in this country In Europ e the line b etween theoretical computer science and the rest of computer science and engineering is much more blurred partially b ecause computer science and en gineering in general are more theoretical A much greater prop ortion of Europ ean research go es into programming language theory semantics sp ecication languages pro of systems verication metho ds etc For brevity and the lack of a b etter term I will use the term formal metho ds for all of these areas Europ eans put much more faith and eorts into ACM SIGACT NEWS No June y Supp orted by ONR grant NJ EECS Dept University of Michigan Ann Arb or MI gurevichumichedu foundational investigation of software and hardware technology and into developing formal metho ds for use in software and hardware Of course things are not black and white For example the American conference on Principles of Programming Languages is very theoretical and Europ ean inuence can b e easily discerned there and there are excellent complexity theorists in Europ e Nevertheless the gap is huge and to a great extent it is the gap b etween the complexity and formal metho ds communities The rst is centered heavily in the US there is a fair numb er of reputable complexity theorists in Germany but your ngers may suce to count them in France or Great Britain The second spreads more evenly but plays a much greater role in Europ e Only a few p eople work b oth in complexity and formal metho ds An interesting example of the Europ ean version of the split b etween the two communities is the Computer Science Department of Edinburgh University in Scotland They have two disjoint seminars One is their Theory Seminar It is huge as theory seminars go and devoted to semantics and formal metho ds in general it is as go o d as any formalmetho ds seminar in the world The other one is devoted to complexity theory also of excellent quality but tiny I sp oke in b oth seminars and was told that such incidents are rare indeed To o often complexity theorists are not interested at all in semantics and what we call here formal metho ds and to o often exp erts in formal metho ds are not interested in and do not know mo dern complexity theory Furthermore the formal metho ds eld itself splits into a numb er of areas sp eaking very dierent languages Yes there are numerous visits of Americans to Europ e and Europ eans to the US but all to o often complexity theorists go to sp eak to complexity theorists and formal metho ds exp erts go to sp eak to formal metho ds exp erts in their area even if they all go to the same conference One meets American researchers dismissing Europ ean computer science as largely irrelevant pure logic And one militant French computer scientist told me that complexity theory is irrelevant pure mathematics He is not typical and the phrase was thrown during a heated discussion but the sentiment of that phrase is not completely foreign to many in Europ e I had to decide whether to concentrate on a few carefully chosen areas or to try to cover Europ ean logic activities in general The latter task seemed frighteningly hard Logic p ermeates all areas of computer science in Europ e and Europ ean logic activities are so intensive and diverse that it would take a large committee and longer time to survey them prop erly On the other hand particular elds are surveyed from time to time by exp erts who know the researchers and the pap ers and can write surveys without the opp ortunities of sp ecial learning tours whereas I didnt know of any general study of Europ ean logic activities The opp ortunity of a learning tour seemed to suggest the more ambitious general study After a p erio d of hesitation I decided to do that and I sp ent much of the Europ ean tour learning things I did not know and talking with p eople with whom I had had little or no interaction b efore In this rep ort I am not going to catalog who is doing what in Europ e It makes no sense for one p erson to attempt to compile a comprehensive survey of Europ ean logic activities in few months As I mentioned earlier it would take more p eople and more time to write a comprehensive survey Moreover such a survey has b een published recently van Leewen volumes A and B But to illustrate how much is going on in Europ e British logic activities are sketched in Section Why British Well my division of computer science into Europ ean and American is not strictly geographic I am trying to discern typical and distinguishing Europ ean tendencies and Great Britain is very Europ ean in that sense If you want to know how it feels to bring coals to Newcastle give a formal metho ds talk in UK That is how I felt in March at the th British Collo quium for Theoretical Computer Science in Newcastle up on Tyne England It is somewhat surprising that theoretical computer science is so dierent in the UK and the US after all we share roughly the same language But theoretical computer science is not the only eld where British hold their own British TV is another such eld Another reason for concentrating on UK is that Wilfrid Ho dges volunteered to write that sketch for me In fact I sp ent more time in France with its own rich logic culture Section is devoted to p ositive sides of the Europ ean way of doing things there are things for us to learn Section is devoted to other comments The learning tour in Fall aected me a great deal even though I had visited Europ e many times b efore and was familiar with Europ ean computer science and many prominent Europ ean computer scientists The tour and the rep ort have b een hard work but I enjoyed it The tour gave me a wider p ersp ective I was esp ecially impressed by Europ ean b oldness in promoting formal metho ds That b oldness is contagious In spite of the criticism that I have for Europ ean ways of doing things the tour gave me more condence that a logician may b e of great help to software engineers and even himselfherself may b e a successful software engineer Acknowledgments It is a pleasure to thank ONR for the supp ort and for trust ing my judgment and not micromanaging the tour to thank INRIA Ro quencourt for the excellent condition for my work in Paris to thank my Europ ean colleagues for invitations explanations and for b eing so generous with their time to thank Wilfrid Ho dges for the sur vey of British logic activities to thank my colleagues Krzysztof Apt Andreas Blass Egon Borger Thierry Co quand Gordon Plotkon Dean Rosenzweig Victor Vianu and Moshe Vardi for comments on earlier versions of the rep ort I shamelessly used some of the com ments Logic activities in Great Britain By Wilfrid Ho dges Dean Queen Mary College London England esp ecially for this rep ort Organisation There is a huge amount of activity in Britain on the frontier b etween logic and computer science Most of the research and development is still taking place in the universities and p olytechnics and a few ma jor centres Cambridge Edinburgh Imp erial College London Manchester Oxford account for a high prop ortion of it But there are an increasing numb er of go o d logicians employed in public or private industry British Telecom ICL Hewlett Packard or software houses Adelard Logica Praxis This makes for fragmentation Also the eld develops very quickly A typical
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