Samson Abramsky (born 12 March 1953) is a British computer scientist who is a Professor of Computer Science at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

. He was previously the Christopher Strachey Professor of Computing at Wolfson College, Oxford, from 2000 to 2021. Abramsky's early work included contributions to

domain theory Domain theory is a branch of mathematics that studies special kinds of partially ordered sets (posets) commonly called domains. Consequently, domain theory can be considered as a branch of order theory. The field has major applications in computer ...

and the connections thereof with geometric logic. Since then, his work has covered the lazy

lambda calculus In mathematical logic, the lambda calculus (also written as ''λ''-calculus) is a formal system for expressing computability, computation based on function Abstraction (computer science), abstraction and function application, application using var ...

, strictness analysis, concurrency theory, interaction categories and geometry of interaction,

game semantics Game semantics is an approach to Formal semantics (logic), formal semantics that grounds the concepts of truth or Validity (logic), validity on Game theory, game-theoretic concepts, such as the existence of a winning strategy for a player. In this ...

and

quantum computing A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of wave-particle duality, both particles and waves, and quantum computing takes advantage of this behavior using s ...

. Notably, he co-pioneered categorical quantum mechanics. More recently, he has been applying methods from categorical semantics to finite model theory, with applications to

descriptive complexity Descriptive complexity is a branch of computational complexity theory and of finite model theory that characterizes complexity classes by the type of logic needed to express the formal language, languages in them. For example, PH (complexity), PH, ...

Education

Abramsky was educated at Hasmonean Grammar School for Boys,

Hendon Hendon is an urban area in the London Borough of Barnet, northwest London northwest of Charing Cross. Hendon was an ancient Manorialism, manor and parish in the county of Middlesex and a former borough, the Municipal Borough of Hendon; it has ...

and at

King's College, Cambridge King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a List of colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces ...

(BA 1975, MA Philosophy 1979, Diploma in Computer Science) and

Queen Mary, University of London Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, or informally QM, and formerly Queen Mary and Westfield College) is a public research university in Mile End, East London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University of London. Today, ...

(PhD Computer Science 1988, supervised by Richard Bornat).

Career and research

Since 2021, Abramsky has been Professor of Computer Science at

. He has been a Fellow of 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 ...

since 2004. His research includes the development of

in logical form, and categorical quantum mechanics. His earlier positions include: * Programmer, GEC Computers Limited, 1976–1978 * Lecturer, Department of Computer Science and Statistics, QMUL, 1980–1983 * Lecturer, 1983–1988, reader, 1988–1990, professor, 1990–1995, Department of Computing,

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

* Professor of Theoretical Computer Science,

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 ...

, 1996–2000 * Christopher Strachey Professor of Computing,

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, 2000–2021 Abramsky has played a leading role in the development of

, and its applications to the

semantics of programming languages In programming language theory, semantics is the rigorous mathematical study of the meaning of programming languages. Semantics assigns computational meaning to valid strings in a programming language syntax. It is closely related to, and oft ...

. Other notable contributions include his work on

in logical form, the lazy

, strictness analysis, concurrency theory, interaction categories, and geometry of interaction. He has recently been working on high-level methods for quantum computation and information.

Selected publications

Samson Abramsky co-edited 6 Volumes ''Handbook of Logic in Computer Science'' with Dov Gabbay and Tom Maibaum: * 1992. ''Volume 1: Background: Mathematical Structures''. * 1992. ''Volume 2: Background: Computational Structures''. * 1995. ''Volume 3: Semantic Structures''. * 1995. ''Volume 4: Semantic Modelling''. * 2001. ''Volume 5: Logic and Algebraic Methods''. * ''Volume 6: Logical methods in computer science''. Abramsky has published over two hundred publications and his

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with success indicators such as winning t ...

was 57 as of October 2019. * 1986. ''Strictness analysis for higher-order functions''. (with GL Burn, C Hankin). Science of Computer Programming. * 1990. ''The Lazy

Lambda Calculus In mathematical logic, the lambda calculus (also written as ''λ''-calculus) is a formal system for expressing computability, computation based on function Abstraction (computer science), abstraction and function application, application using var ...

''. Research Topics in Functional Programming. * 1993. ''Computational Interpretations of Linear logic''. in Theoretical Computer Science 111 * 1994. ''

Domain Theory Domain theory is a branch of mathematics that studies special kinds of partially ordered sets (posets) commonly called domains. Consequently, domain theory can be considered as a branch of order theory. The field has major applications in computer ...

''. (with A Jung). in Handbook of Logic in Computer Science 3. * 1996. ''Interaction categories and the foundations of typed concurrent programming''. (with S Gay and R Nagarajan). NATO ASI SERIES F COMPUTER AND SYSTEMS SCIENCES 152 * 1997. ''Specifying interaction categories''. (with D Pavlović). Category Theory and Computer Science * 2002. ''Geometry of interaction and linear combinatory algebras''. (with E Haghverdi and P Scott). Mathematical Structures in Computer Science 12 (5) * 2003. ''Sequentiality vs. concurrency in games and logic''. Mathematical Structures in Computer Science 13 (4) Some of the later works of Abramsky include: * 2010. ''Introduction to categories and categorical logic''. (with N. Tzevelekos). In New Structures for Physics. Springer. * 2012. ''Logical Bell Inequalities''. (with Lucien Hardy). In Physical Review A. Vol. 85. No. ARTN 062114. * 2013.
Robust Constraint Satisfaction and Local Hidden Variables in Quantum Mechanics
'. (with G. Gottlob and P. Kolaitis). IJCAI.

Awards and honours

Abramsky is a Fellow of the

(2004), 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". ...

(2000), and a Member of

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

(1993). He is a member of the editorial boards of the North Holland Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, and of the Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science. He was general chair of LiCS 2000–2003, and is a member of the LiCS Organizing Committee. * He was awarded the EATCS Award in 2024 which is given for contributions to theoretical computer science over a life long career. Among his work mentioned in the laudation are his contributions to domain theory, game semantics, and categorical approach to quantum computation and information. * He was elected Fellow of ACM (2014) ''For contributions to domains in logical form,

, categorical quantum mechanics, and contextual semantics.'' * He was awarded the BCS Lovelace Medal in 2013 * Three of his papers won the LiCS Test-of-Time award (a 20-year retrospective): ** Samson Abramsky. "

Domain theory Domain theory is a branch of mathematics that studies special kinds of partially ordered sets (posets) commonly called domains. Consequently, domain theory can be considered as a branch of order theory. The field has major applications in computer ...

in Logical Form" (1987). The award was presented at LiCS 2007. ** Samson Abramsky, Kohei Honda and Guy McCusker. "A Fully Abstract Game Semantics for General References" (1998). The award was presented at LiCS 2018. ** Samson Abramsky and Bob Coecke. "A categorical semantics of quantum protocols." (2004). The award was presented at LiCS 2024. * He was awarded an EPSRC Senior Research Fellowship on Foundational Structures and Methods for Quantum Informatics in 2007. * Fellow of the

(2004) * Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

(2000) Abramsky's nomination for the

reads:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abramsky, Samson 1953 births Living people Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Alumni of Queen Mary University of London Fellows of Wolfson College, Oxford Members of the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford Academics of Queen Mary University of London Academics of Imperial College London Academics of the University of Edinburgh British computer scientists 20th-century British Jews British people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Jewish British scientists Formal methods people Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal Society Members of Academia Europaea 2014 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery