Gordon David Plotkin (born 9 September 1946) is a theoretical computer scientist in the School of Informatics at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

. Plotkin is probably best known for his introduction of structural

operational semantics Operational semantics is a category of formal programming language semantics in which certain desired properties of a program, such as correctness, safety or security, are verified by constructing proofs from logical statements about its exec ...

(SOS) and his work on

denotational semantics In computer science, denotational semantics (initially known as mathematical semantics or Scott–Strachey semantics) is an approach of formalizing the meanings of programming languages by constructing mathematical objects (called ''denotations'' ...

. In particular, his notes on ''A Structural Approach to Operational Semantics'' were very influential. He has contributed to many other areas of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Education

Plotkin was educated at the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

and the

, gaining his Bachelor of Science degree in 1967 and PhD in 1972 supervised by Rod Burstall.

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). His former doctoral students include

Luca Cardelli Luca Andrea Cardelli is an Italian computer scientist who is a research professor at the University of Oxford, UK. Cardelli is well known for his research in type theory and operational semantics. Among other contributions, in programming lang ...

, Philippa Gardner, Doug Gurr,

Eugenio Moggi Eugenio Moggi is a professor of computer science at the University of Genoa, Italy. He first described the general use of monads to structure programs. Biography Academic qualifications: * PhD in Computer Science, University of Edinburgh ...

, and Lǐ Wèi.

Awards and honours

Plotkin was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(FRS) in 1992, and a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

(FRSE) and is a Member of the Academia Europæa and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

. 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." His nomination for the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

reads:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Plotkin, Gordon 1946 births Living people British computer scientists Fellows of the Royal Society Members of Academia Europaea Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holders Formal methods people Programming language researchers Scottish Jews Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Academics of the University of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Jewish British scientists Alumni of the University of Glasgow