Career Highlights for Dana S. Scott

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25.02.2013 Dana Scott's Career Highlights Career Highlights for Dana S. Scott Degrees: B.A.: The University of California, Berkeley, CA June 1954 Ph.D.: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ June 1958 Dr.h.c: Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands June 1986 Dr.h.c: Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, Germany May 1995 Dr.h.c: The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK July 1995 Dr.h.c: The University of Ljubljana, Slovenia Feb. 2003 Academy/Association Fellowships: Academia Europaea American Association for the Advancement of Science American Academy of Arts and Sciences Association for Computing Machinery British Academy Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters New York Academy of Sciences U.S. National Academy of Sciences Prizes: LeRoy P. Steele Prize American Mathematical Society, 1972 Association for Computing Machinery, Turing Award (with Michael Rabin) 1976 Harold Pender Award University of Pennsylvania, 1990 Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Philosophy 1997 Bolzano Medal for Merit in the Czech Academy of Sciences, 2001 Mathematical Sciences Academic Positions Held: [01] Instructor, University of Chicago 1958-60 [02] Assistant Professor of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley 1960-62 [03] Associate Professor of Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley 1962-63 [04] Associate Professor of Logic and Mathematics, Stanford University 1963-67 [05] Professor of Logic and Mathematics, Stanford University 1967-69 [06] Visiting Professor of Mathematics, University of Amsterdam 1968-69 [07] Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics, Princeton University 1969-72 [08] Professor of Mathematical Logic, Oxford University 1972-81 [09] University Professor of Computer Science, Mathematical Logic, 1981-03 and Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University [10] Hillman Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University 1989-03 [11] Visiting O.Univ.Prof. Math., Universitaets Linz 1992-93 [12] Professor Emeritus July 2003 Research Fellowhips: Bell Telephone Fellow, Princeton University 1956-57 Miller Institute Fellow, University of California, Berkeley 1960-61 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow 1963-65 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow 1978-79 Visiting Scientist, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center 1978-79 www.cs.cmu.edu/~scott/career.html 1/2 25.02.2013 Dana Scott's Career Highlights Professorial Fellow, Merton College, Oxford 1972-81 Visiting Professor, Institut Mittag-Leffler, Sweden 2001 Humbolt Stiftung Senior Visiting Scientst, Munich, Germany 2003 Return to Home Page E-MAIL: [email protected] Last revised: 24 May 2004 www.cs.cmu.edu/~scott/career.html 2/2.

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Toward a Mathematical Semantics for Computer Languages
(! 1 J TOWARD A MATHEMATICAL SEMANTICS FOR COMPUTER LANGUAGES by Dana Scott and - Christopher Strachey Oxford University Computing Laboratory Programming Research Group-Library 8-11 Keble Road Oxford OX, 3QD Oxford (0865) 54141 Oxford University Computing Laboratory Programming Research Group tI. cr• "';' """, ":.\ ' OXFORD UNIVERSITY COMPUTING LABORATORY PROGRAMMING RESEARCH GROUP ~ 4S BANBURY ROAD \LJ OXFORD ~ .. 4 OCT 1971 ~In (UY'Y L TOWARD A ~ATHEMATICAL SEMANTICS FOR COMPUTER LANGUAGES by Dana Scott Princeton University and Christopher Strachey Oxford University Technical Monograph PRG-6 August 1971 Oxford University Computing Laboratory. Programming Research Group, 45 Banbury Road, Oxford. ~ 1971 Dana Scott and Christopher Strachey Department of Philosophy, Oxford University Computing Laboratory. 1879 lIall, Programming Research Group. Princeton University, 45 Banbury Road. Princeton. New Jersey 08540. Oxford OX2 6PE. This pape r is also to appear in Fl'(.'ceedinBs 0;- the .';y-,;;;o:illT:: on ComputeT's and AutoJ7'ata. lo-licroloo'ave Research Institute Symposia Series Volume 21. Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. and appears as a Technical Monograph by special aJ"rangement ...·ith the publishers. RefeJ"~nces in the Ii terature should be:- made to the _"!'OL·,-,',~;r:gs, as the texts are identical and the Symposia Sl?ries is gcaerally available in libraries. ABSTRACT Compilers for high-level languages aTe generally constructed to give the complete translation of the programs into machme language. As machines merely juggle bit patterns, the concepts of the original language may be lost or at least obscured during this passage. The purpose of a mathematical semantics is to give a correct and meaningful correspondence between programs and mathematical entities in a way that is entirely independent of an implementation.
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Why Mathematical Proof?
Why Mathematical Proof? Dana S. Scott, FBA, FNAS University Professor Emeritus Carnegie Mellon University Visiting Scholar University of California, Berkeley NOTICE! The author has plagiarized text and graphics from innumerable publications and sites, and he has failed to record attributions! But, as this lecture is intended as an entertainment and is not intended for publication, he regards such copying, therefore, as “fair use”. Keep this quiet, and do please forgive him. A Timeline for Geometry Some Greek Geometers Thales of Miletus (ca. 624 – 548 BC). Pythagoras of Samos (ca. 580 – 500 BC). Plato (428 – 347 BC). Archytas (428 – 347 BC). Theaetetus (ca. 417 – 369 BC). Eudoxus of Cnidus (ca. 408 – 347 BC). Aristotle (384 – 322 BC). Euclid (ca. 325 – ca. 265 BC). Archimedes of Syracuse (ca. 287 – ca. 212 BC). Apollonius of Perga (ca. 262 – ca. 190 BC). Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy)(ca. 90 AD – ca. 168 AD). Diophantus of Alexandria (ca. 200 – 298 AD). Pappus of Alexandria (ca. 290 – ca. 350 AD). Proclus Lycaeus (412 – 485 AD). There is no Royal Road to Geometry Euclid of Alexandria ca. 325 — ca. 265 BC Euclid taught at Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy I Soter, who reigned over Egypt from 323 to 285 BC. He authored the most successful textbook ever produced — and put his sources into obscurity! Moreover, he made us struggle with proofs ever since. Why Has Euclidean Geometry Been So Successful? • Our naive feeling for space is Euclidean. • Its methods have been very useful. • Euclid also shows us a mysterious connection between (visual) intuition and proof. The Pythagorean Theorem Euclid's Elements: Proposition 47 of Book 1 The Pythagorean Theorem Generalized If it holds for one Three triple, Similar it holds Figures for all.
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The Origins of Structural Operational Semantics
The Origins of Structural Operational Semantics Gordon D. Plotkin Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, King’s Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, Scotland I am delighted to see my Aarhus notes [59] on SOS, Structural Operational Semantics, published as part of this special issue. The notes already contain some historical remarks, but the reader may be interested to know more of the personal intellectual context in which they arose. I must straightaway admit that at this distance in time I do not claim total accuracy or completeness: what I write should rather be considered as a reconstruction, based on (possibly faulty) memory, papers, old notes and consultations with colleagues. As a postgraduate I learnt the untyped λ-calculus from Rod Burstall. I was further deeply impressed by the work of Peter Landin on the semantics of pro- gramming languages [34–37] which includes his abstract SECD machine. One should also single out John McCarthy’s contributions [45–48], which include his 1962 introduction of abstract syntax, an essential tool, then and since, for all approaches to the semantics of programming languages. The IBM Vienna school [42, 41] were interested in specifying real programming languages, and, in particular, worked on an abstract interpreting machine for PL/I using VDL, their Vienna Deﬁnition Language; they were inﬂuenced by the ideas of McCarthy, Landin and Elgot [18]. I remember attending a seminar at Edinburgh where the intricacies of their PL/I abstract machine were explained. The states of these machines are tuples of various kinds of complex trees and there is also a stack of environments; the transition rules involve much tree traversal to access syntactical control points, handle jumps, and to manage concurrency.
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Actor Model of Computation
Published in ArXiv http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.1459 Actor Model of Computation Carl Hewitt http://carlhewitt.info This paper is dedicated to Alonzo Church and Dana Scott. The Actor model is a mathematical theory that treats “Actors” as the universal primitives of concurrent digital computation. The model has been used both as a framework for a theoretical understanding of concurrency, and as the theoretical basis for several practical implementations of concurrent systems. Unlike previous models of computation, the Actor model was inspired by physical laws. It was also influenced by the programming languages Lisp, Simula 67 and Smalltalk-72, as well as ideas for Petri Nets, capability-based systems and packet switching. The advent of massive concurrency through client- cloud computing and many-core computer architectures has galvanized interest in the Actor model. An Actor is a computational entity that, in response to a message it receives, can concurrently: send a finite number of messages to other Actors; create a finite number of new Actors; designate the behavior to be used for the next message it receives. There is no assumed order to the above actions and they could be carried out concurrently. In addition two messages sent concurrently can arrive in either order. Decoupling the sender from communications sent was a fundamental advance of the Actor model enabling asynchronous communication and control structures as patterns of passing messages. November 7, 2010 Page 1 of 25 Contents Introduction ............................................................ 3 Fundamental concepts ............................................ 3 Illustrations ............................................................ 3 Modularity thru Direct communication and asynchrony ............................................................. 3 Indeterminacy and Quasi-commutativity ............... 4 Locality and Security ............................................
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The Discoveries of Continuations
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Michael Oser Rabin Automata, Logic and Randomness in Computation
Michael Oser Rabin Automata, Logic and Randomness in Computation Luca Aceto ICE-TCS, School of Computer Science, Reykjavik University Pearls of Computation, 6 November 2015 \One plus one equals zero. We have to get used to this fact of life." (Rabin in a course session dated 30/10/1997) Thanks to Pino Persiano for sharing some anecdotes with me. Luca Aceto The Work of Michael O. Rabin 1 / 16 Michael Rabin's accolades Selected awards and honours Turing Award (1976) Harvey Prize (1980) Israel Prize for Computer Science (1995) Paris Kanellakis Award (2003) Emet Prize for Computer Science (2004) Tel Aviv University Dan David Prize Michael O. Rabin (2010) Dijkstra Prize (2015) \1970 in computer science is not classical; it's sort of ancient. Classical is 1990." (Rabin in a course session dated 17/11/1998) Luca Aceto The Work of Michael O. Rabin 2 / 16 Michael Rabin's work: through the prize citations ACM Turing Award 1976 (joint with Dana Scott) For their joint paper \Finite Automata and Their Decision Problems," which introduced the idea of nondeterministic machines, which has proved to be an enormously valuable concept. ACM Paris Kanellakis Award 2003 (joint with Gary Miller, Robert Solovay, and Volker Strassen) For \their contributions to realizing the practical uses of cryptography and for demonstrating the power of algorithms that make random choices", through work which \led to two probabilistic primality tests, known as the Solovay-Strassen test and the Miller-Rabin test". ACM/EATCS Dijkstra Prize 2015 (joint with Michael Ben-Or) For papers that started the ﬁeld of fault-tolerant randomized distributed algorithms.
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A Memorable Trip Abhisekh Sankaran Research Scholar, IIT Bombay
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A Brief Scientific Biography of Robin Milner
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Development of Logic Programming: What Went Wrong, What Was Done About It, and What It Might Mean for the Future
Development of Logic Programming: What went wrong, What was done about it, and What it might mean for the future Carl Hewitt at alum.mit.edu try carlhewitt Abstract follows: A class of entities called terms is defined and a term is an expression. A sequence of expressions is an Logic Programming can be broadly defined as “using logic expression. These expressions are represented in the to deduce computational steps from existing propositions” machine by list structures [Newell and Simon 1957]. (although this is somewhat controversial). The focus of 2. Certain of these expressions may be regarded as this paper is on the development of this idea. declarative sentences in a certain logical system which Consequently, it does not treat any other associated topics will be analogous to a universal Post canonical system. related to Logic Programming such as constraints, The particular system chosen will depend on abduction, etc. programming considerations but will probably have a The idea has a long development that went through single rule of inference which will combine substitution many twists in which important questions turned out to for variables with modus ponens. The purpose of the combination is to avoid choking the machine with special have surprising answers including the following: cases of general propositions already deduced. Is computation reducible to logic? 3. There is an immediate deduction routine which when Are the laws of thought consistent? given a set of premises will deduce a set of immediate This paper describes what went wrong at various points, conclusions. Initially, the immediate deduction routine what was done about it, and what it might mean for the will simply write down all one-step consequences of the future of Logic Programming.
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Alan Mathison Turing and the Turing Award Winners
Alan Turing and the Turing Award Winners A Short Journey Through the History of Computer TítuloScience do capítulo Luis Lamb, 22 June 2012 Slides by Luis C. Lamb Alan Mathison Turing A.M. Turing, 1951 Turing by Stephen Kettle, 2007 by Slides by Luis C. Lamb Assumptions • I assume knowlege of Computing as a Science. • I shall not talk about computing before Turing: Leibniz, Babbage, Boole, Gödel... • I shall not detail theorems or algorithms. • I shall apologize for omissions at the end of this presentation. • Comprehensive information about Turing can be found at http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/ • The full version of this talk is available upon request. Slides by Luis C. Lamb Alan Mathison Turing § Born 23 June 1912: 2 Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, London W9 Google maps Slides by Luis C. Lamb Alan Mathison Turing: short biography • 1922: Attends Hazlehurst Preparatory School • ’26: Sherborne School Dorset • ’31: King’s College Cambridge, Maths (graduates in ‘34). • ’35: Elected to Fellowship of King’s College Cambridge • ’36: Publishes “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheindungsproblem”, Journal of the London Math. Soc. • ’38: PhD Princeton (viva on 21 June) : “Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals”, supervised by Alonzo Church. • Letter to Philipp Hall: “I hope Hitler will not have invaded England before I come back.” • ’39 Joins Bletchley Park: designs the “Bombe”. • ’40: First Bombes are fully operational • ’41: Breaks the German Naval Enigma. • ’42-44: Several contibutions to war effort on codebreaking; secure speech devices; computing. • ’45: Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) Computer. Slides by Luis C.
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Robin Milner, 1934--2010
Robin Milner, 1934–2010 His work in theorem proving and verification John Harrison Intel Corporation January 28th, 2011 (09:15–09:27) Invited speaker at TPHOLs 2000? From: Robin Milner <[email protected]> To: John Harrison <[email protected]> Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 11:32:39 +0000 Dear John Thanks very much for inviting me to speak at TPHOLs. I would enjoy it, but the main question is whether I can offer enough of a perspective on automated and interactive theorem proving, as I haven’t done any to speak of for 20 years! Cooper is perhaps most famous for the first elementary-time decision procedure for linear integer (Presburger) arithmetic. (In fact, arguably the first for any significant first-order theory.) 1968: Arrival as a researcher in Swansea What really sparked me off was getting interested in program verification and what semantics might mean. When I went to Swansea in 1968 I took a research job, I gave up teaching and became a research assistant with David Cooper who was head of the department in Swansea. He had a small group there, working on program verification and automatic theorem-proving and semantics. (In fact, arguably the first for any significant first-order theory.) 1968: Arrival as a researcher in Swansea What really sparked me off was getting interested in program verification and what semantics might mean. When I went to Swansea in 1968 I took a research job, I gave up teaching and became a research assistant with David Cooper who was head of the department in Swansea.
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COS 360 Programming Languages Formal Semantics
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