Charles Leonard Hamblin

Charles Leonard Hamblin (20 November 1922 – 14 May 1985) was an Australian philosopher, logician, and computer pioneer, as well as a professor of philosophy at the New South Wales University of Technology (now the University of New South Wales) in Sydney.

Among his most well-known achievements in the area of computer science was the introduction of Reverse Polish Notation and the use in 1957 of a push-down pop-up stack. This preceded the work of Friedrich Ludwig Bauer and Klaus Samelson on use of a push-pop stack. The stack had been invented by Alan Turing in 1946 when he introduced such a stack in his design of the ACE computer. In philosophy, Hamblin is known for his book ''Fallacies'', a standard work in the area of the false conclusions in logic. In formal semantics, Hamblin is known for his computational model of discourse as well as Hamblin semantics (or alternative semantics), an approach to the semantics of questions.

Career and life

Hamblin was born in Petersham, New South Wales on 20 November 1922. His parents were Charles Oswald Hamblin and Katherine May Whyte. He attended North Sydney Boys High School and Geelong Grammar. Interrupted by the Second World War and radar service in the Australian Air Force, Hamblin's studies included Arts (Philosophy and Mathematics), Science (Physics), and an MA in Philosophy (First Class Honours) at the University of Melbourne. He obtained a doctorate in 1957 at the London School of Economics on the topic ''Language and the Theory of Information'', apparently under Karl Popper, critiquing Claude Shannon's information theory from a semantic perspective. From 1955, he was lecturer at N.S.W. University of Technology, and later professor of philosophy at the same place, until his death in 1985, during which time the organization had been renamed The University of New South Wales.

In the second half of the 1950s, Hamblin worked with the third computer available in Australia, a DEUCE computer manufactured by the English Electric Company. For the DEUCE, he designed one of the first programming languages, later called GEORGE, which was based on Reverse Polish Notation. His associated compiler (language translator) translated the programs formulated in GEORGE into the machine language of the computer in 1957.

Hamblin's work is considered to be the first to use Reverse Polish Notation, and this is why he is called an inventor of this representation method. Regardless of whether Hamblin independently invented the notation and its usage, he showed the merit, service, and advantage of the Reverse Polish way of writing programs for the processing on programmable computers and algorithms to make it happen.

The second direct result of his work with the development of compilers was the concept of the push-pop stack (previously invented by Alan M. Turing for the ACE in 1945), which Hamblin developed independently of Friedrich Ludwig Bauer and Klaus Samelson. In the same year, 1957, Hamblin presented his stack concept at the first Australian Computer Conference. The compiler was running before that conference. Hamblin's work influenced the development of stack-based computers, their machine instructions, their arguments on a stack, and reference addresses. The design was taken up by English Electric in their KDF9 computer, delivered in 1963.

In the 1960s, Hamblin again increasingly turned to philosophical questions. He wrote an influential introductory book on formal logic which is today a standard work on fallacies. It focused upon the treatment of false conclusions by traditional logic and brought into that treatment formal dialectic and developed it further. As such, Hamblin is considered as one of the founders of the modern informal logic.

Hamblin contributed to the development of modern temporal logic in two ways. In its very early period he corresponded with Arthur Prior between 1958 and 1965; this collaboration culminated with the so-called Hamblin implications. Later in 1972 Hamblin independently rediscovered a form of duration calculus ( interval logic), without being aware of the 1947 work of A. G. Walker on this topic, who was not interested in the tense aspect. Hamblin's duration calculus is very similar to that later developed by James Allen and Patrick J. Hayes in the mid 1980s.

Hamblin was familiar with ancient Greek and several Asian and Pacific languages and in 1984 published a polyglot phrasebook on 25 of the latter, including "Burmese, Korean, Japanese, Fijian and Tahitian". A classical music lover who played the piano, Hamblin was setting words of Wittgenstein to music while hospitalized with an affliction that proved fatal.

He was married to Rita Hamblin. They had two daughters, Fiona Katherine and Julie Claire."Family Notices"
''The Canberra Times'', 16 May 1985, p. 21.

He died at Darling Point, New South Wales on 14 May 1985.

Publications

Monographs

* ''Fallacies''. Methuen London 1970, and (paperback), new edition of 2004 with Vale Press, (paperback) – even today a standard work to the topic.
*
Elementary Formal Logic: Programmed Course
'. London: Methuen, 1967,
* ''Imperatives''. Blackwell Oxford 1987, .
* ''Language and the Theory of Information''. PhD Thesis, Logic and Scientific Method Programme, University of London, London, UK. Supervised by Karl Popper, submitted October 1956, awarded 1957.
*
Languages of Asia and the Pacific: A Travellers' Phrasebook
'. London: Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1984, .

Articles

* "Translation To and From Polish Notation". ''The Computer Journal'' 5/3, October 1962, pp. 210–213
* '"An Addressless Coding Scheme based on Mathematical notation". ''W.R.E. Conference on Computing: Proceedings'', Salisbury, Weapons Research Establishment 1957
* "GEORGE, an Addressless Coding Scheme for DEUCE". ''Australian National Committee on Computation and Automatic Control, Summarized Proceedings of First Conference'', Paper C6.1, 1960
* "Computer Languages". ''The Australian Journal of Science'' 20, P. 135-139. Reprinted in ''The Australian Computer Journal'' 17/4, pp. 195–198 (November 1985)
* "Questions in Montague English". ''Foundations of Language'', 1973, 10: 41–53.

Arranged by date order

The following list of monographs, papers and articles is based on Peter McBurney's list i

published online on 27 July 2008:

*C. L. Hamblin 957 An addressless coding scheme based on mathematical notation. Proceedings of the First Australian Conference on Computing and Data Processing, Salisbury, South Australia: Weapons Research Establishment, June 1957.
*C. L. Hamblin 957 Computer Languages. The Australian Journal of Science, 20: 135–139. Reprinte
here
in The Australian Computer Journal, 17(4): 195–198 (November 1985).
*C. L. Hamblin 957 Review of: W. R. Ashby: Introduction to Cybernetics. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 35.
*C. L. Hamblin 958 Questions. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 36(3): 159–168.
*C. L. Hamblin 958 Review of: Time and Modality, by A. N. Prior. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 36: 232–234.
*C. L. Hamblin 958 Surprises, innovations and probabilities. Proceedings of the ANU Symposium on Surprise, Canberra, July 1958.
*C. L. Hamblin 958 Review of: Formal Analysis of Normative Systems, by A. R. Anderson. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 36.
*C. L. Hamblin 958 GEORGE Programming Manual. Duplicated, 1958. Revised and enlarged, 1959.
*C. L. Hamblin 959 The Modal "Probably". Mind, New Series, 68: 234–240.
*C. L. Hamblin 962 Translation to and from Polish notation. Computer Journal, 5: 210–213.
*C. L. Hamblin 963 Questions aren't statements. Philosophy of Science, 30(1): 62–63.
*R. J. Gillings and C. L. Hamblin 964 Babylonian reciprocal tables on UTECOM. Technology, 9 (2): 41–42, August 1964. An expanded version appeared in Australian Journal of Science, 27, 1964.
*C. L. Hamblin 964 Has probability any foundations? Proceedings of the Symposium on Probability of the Statistical Society of New South Wales, May 1964. Reproduced in Science Yearbook, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 1964.
*C. L. Hamblin 964 Review of: Communication: A Logical Model, by D. Harrah. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 42.
*C. L. Hamblin 964 Review of: Analysis of Questions, by N. D. Belnap. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 42.
*C. L. Hamblin 965 Review of: A Preface to the Logic of Science, by P. Alexander. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 15(60): 360–362.
*C. L. Hamblin 966 Elementary Formal Logic, a Programmed Course. (Sydney: Hicks Smith). Republished by Methuen, in London, UK, 1967. Also translated into Swedish by J. Mannerheim, under the title: Element"ar Logik, ein programmerad kurs. (Stockholm: Laromedelsf"orlagen, 1970).
*C. L. Hamblin 967 One-valued logic. Philosophical Quarterly, 17: 38–45.
*C. L. Hamblin 967 Questions, logic of. Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (New York: Collier Macmillan).
*C. L. Hamblin 967 An algorithm for polynomial operations. Computer Journal, 10.
*C. L. Hamblin 967 Review of: New Approaches to the Logical Theory of Interrogatives, by L. Aqvist. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 44.
*C. L. Hamblin 969 Starting and stopping. The Monist, 53: 410–425.
*C. L. Hamblin 970 Fallacies. London, UK: Methuen.
*C. L. Hamblin 970 The effect of when it's said. Theoria, 36: 249–264.
*C. L. Hamblin 971 Mathematical models of dialogue. Theoria, 37: 130–155.
*C. L. Hamblin 971 Instants and intervals. Studium Generale, 24: 127–134.
*C. L. Hamblin 972 You and I. Analysis, 33: 1–4.
*C. L. Hamblin 972 Quandaries and the logic of rules. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 1: 74–85.
*C. L. Hamblin 973 Questions in Montague English. Foundations of Language, 10: 41–53.
*C. L. Hamblin 973 A felicitous fragment of the predicate calculus. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic. 14: 433–446.
*C. L. Hamblin 974 La logica dell'iniziare e del cessare. Italian translation by C. Pizzi of an unpublished article: The logic of starting and stopping. Pages 295–317 in: C. Pizzi (Editor): La Logica del Tempo. Torino: Bringhieri.
*C. L. Hamblin 975 Creswell's colleague TLM. Nous, 9(2): 205–210.
*C. L. Hamblin 975 Saccherian arguments and the self-application of logic. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 53: 157–160.
*C. L. Hamblin 976 An improved "Pons Asinorum"? Journal of the History of Philosophy, 14: 131–136.
*C. L. Hamblin 984 Languages of Asia and the Pacific: A Phrasebook for Travellers and Students. (North Ryde, NSW: Angus and Robertson).
*C. L. Hamblin 987 Imperatives. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
*C. L. Hamblin and P. J. Staines 992 An extraordinarily simple theory of the syllogism. Logique et Analyse, 35: 81.

Patents

* US2849706 "Electronic circuits for deriving a voltage proportional to the logarithm of the magnitude of a variable quantity". Applied 3 Feb. 1953 (applied in Great Britain 4 Feb. 1952), granted 21 Aug. 1958.
* US3008640 "Electric Computing Apparatus". Applied 11 Oct. 1954 (applied in Great Britain 13 Oct. 1953), granted 14 Nov. 1961.

References

Further reading

* Sam Butchart, "Critical Thinking", in: Graham Oppy and N. N. Trakakis, ''A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand'', Monash University Publishing, 2010, pp. 145-146.
* S. A. Grace, ''A History of Philosophy in Australia'', St. Lucia, Qld., Australia: University of Queensland Press, 1984, chapte
"Logic and related areas"
p. 183.
* Jim Mackenzie
Hamblin's Book Fallacies was About"
in: ''Informal Logic'', 31 (4):262-278 (2011).
* Greg Restall, "Classical Logic", in: in: Graham Oppy and N. N. Trakakis, ''A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand'', Monash University Publishing, 2010, pp. 109-110.
* Graham Williams
"A shy blend of logic, maths and languages"
in: ''The Sydney Morning Herald'', 8 June 1985, p. 44 and reprinted a
"A shy blend of logic, maths and languages"
'' The Age'', 17 June 198, p. 15.

External links

* Allen, Murray W. (1985)
"Charles Hamblin (1922–1985)"
''The Australian Computer Journal'', 17(4): 194–195.

Special Issue on Charles Hamblin
''Informal Logic'', Vol. 31, No. 4 (2011).
* McBurney, Peter
A salute to Charles Hamblin
vukutu.com, 10 January 2011.
* McBurney, Peter

at University of Liverpool.
* Von Fintel, Kai
Charles Leonard Hamblin
5 July 2013.

C. L. Hamblin
at PhilPapers

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hamblin, Charles Leonard
1922 births
1985 deaths
Australian computer scientists
Formal methods people
Programming language designers
Programming language researchers
Australian logicians
20th-century Australian philosophers
University of New South Wales faculty
People educated at North Sydney Boys High School