David A. Turner (born 26 January 1946) is a British computer scientist. He is best known for designing and implementing three

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s, including the first for

functional programming In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by applying and composing functions. It is a declarative programming paradigm in which function definitions are trees of expressions that ...

based on

lazy evaluation In programming language theory, lazy evaluation, or call-by-need, is an evaluation strategy which delays the evaluation of an expression until its value is needed ( non-strict evaluation) and which also avoids repeated evaluations (sharing). The ...

, combinator graph reduction, and polymorphic types: SASL (1972),

Kent Recursive Calculator KRC (Kent Recursive Calculator) is a lazy functional language developed by David Turner from November 1979 to October 1981 based on SASL, with pattern matching, guards and ZF expressions (now more usually called list comprehensions). Two imp ...

(KRC) (1981), and the commercially supported Miranda (1985). Miranda had a strong influence on the later

Haskell Haskell () is a general-purpose, statically-typed, purely functional programming language with type inference and lazy evaluation. Designed for teaching, research and industrial applications, Haskell has pioneered a number of programming lan ...

. He has a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

(D.Phil.) from the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. He has held professorships at Queen Mary College, London,

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

and the

University of Kent , motto_lang = , mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' ...

at Canterbury, where he has spent most of his career and retains the title of Emeritus Professor of Computation. He was involved with developing international standards in programming and informatics, as a member of the

International Federation for Information Processing The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) is a global organisation for researchers and professionals working in the field of computing to conduct research, develop standards and promote information sharing. Established in 196 ...

(IFIP) IFIP Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi, which specified, maintains, and supports the

s ALGOL 60 and

ALGOL 68 ALGOL 68 (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1968'') is an imperative programming language that was conceived as a successor to the ALGOL 60 programming language, designed with the goal of a much wider scope of application and more rigorously d ...

. He is also an Emeritus Professor at Middlesex University, England.

Publications

* Turner, David A. SASL language manual. Tech. rept. CS/75/1. Department of Computational Science, University of St. Andrews 1975. * * ''Another Algorithm for Bracket Abstraction'', D. A. Turner, Journal of Symbolic Logic, 44(2):267–270, 1979. * ''Functional Programming and its Applications'', D. A. Turner,

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pre ...

1982. * ''A Parser Generator for use with Miranda'', ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, pages 401–407, Philadelphia, USA, Feb 1996. * ''Elementary Strong Functional Programming'', D. A. Turner, in R. Plasmeijer, P. Hartel, eds, "First International Symposium on Functional Programming Languages in Education",

Lecture Notes in Computer Science ''Lecture Notes in Computer Science'' is a series of computer science books published by Springer Science+Business Media since 1973. Overview The series contains proceedings, post-proceedings, monographs, and Festschrifts. In addition, tutorial ...

, volume 1022, pages 1–13,

Springer-Verlag Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 ...

, 1996. * ''Ensuring Streams Flow'', Alastair Telford and David Turner, in Johnson, ed., "Algebraic Methodology and Software Technology", 6th International Conference, AMAST '97, Sydney Australia, December 1997, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 1349, pages 509–523. AMAST, Springer-Verlag, December 1997. * ''Ensuring the Productivity of Infinite Structures'', A.J.Telford, D.A.Turner, "Technical Report TR 14-97", 37 pages, Computing Laboratory, University of Kent, March 1998. Under submission to "Journal of Functional Programming". * ''Ensuring Termination in ESFP'', A. J. Telford and D. A. Turner, in "15th British Colloquium in Theoretical Computer Science", page 14, Keele, April 1999. To appear in "Journal of Universal Computer Science". * ''A Hierarchy of Elementary Languages with Strong Normalisation Properties'', A.J.Telford, D.A.Turner, "Technical Report TR 2-00", 66 pages, University of Kent Computing Laboratory, January 2000. * ''Total Functional Programming'', Keynote address, pp 1–15, SBLP 2004, Rio de Janeiro, May 2004. * ''Church's Thesis and Functional Programming'', in A. Olszewski ed., "Church's Thesis after 70 years'", pages 518-544, Ontos Verlag, 2006.

References

External links

* , University of Kent at Canterbury
Archive copy of an old staff page at Middlesex University

Miranda functional programming language
{{DEFAULTSORT:Turner, David Living people Academics of Queen Mary University of London Academics of the University of Kent Academics of Middlesex University British computer scientists Members of the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford Alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford Programming language designers Programming language researchers 1946 births