Arthur John Robin Gorell Milner (13 January 1934 – 20 March 2010), known as Robin Milner or A. J. R. G. Milner, was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...

, and a

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...

winner.Obituary – Professor Robin Milner: computer scientist
''

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'', 31 March 2010.

Life, education and career

Milner was born in

Yealmpton Yealmpton () is a village and civil parish in the English county of Devon. It is located in the South Hams on the A379 Plymouth to Kingsbridge road and is about from Plymouth. Its name derives from the River Yealm that flows through the vill ...

, near

Plymouth Plymouth () is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to ...

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into a military family. He gained a

King's Scholar A King's Scholar is a foundation scholar (elected on the basis of good academic performance and usually qualifying for reduced fees) of one of certain public schools. These include Eton College; The King's School, Canterbury; The King's School ...

ship to

Eton College Eton College () is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1440 by Henry VI of England, Henry VI under the name ''Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore'',Nevill, p. 3 ff. i ...

in 1947, and was awarded the Tomline Prize (the highest prize in Mathematics at Eton) in 1952. Subsequently, he served in the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is head ...

, attaining the rank of Second Lieutenant. He then enrolled at

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

, graduating in 1957. Milner first worked as a schoolteacher then as a

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

Ferranti Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The firm was known ...

, before entering academia at

City University, London City, University of London, is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, and a member institution of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1894 as the Northampton Institute, and became a university when The City Univ ...

, then

Swansea University Swansea University ( cy, Prifysgol Abertawe) is a public university, public research university located in Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom. It was chartered as University College of Swansea in 1920, as the fourth college of the University of Wales. ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

, and from 1973 at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...

, where he was a co-founder of the

Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science The Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science (LFCS) is a research institute within the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. It was founded in 1987 and is a community of theoretical computer scientists with ...

(LFCS). He returned to

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

as the head of the Computer Laboratory in 1995 from which he eventually stepped down, although he was still at the laboratory. From 2009, Milner was a Scottish Informatics & Computer Science Alliance Advanced Research Fellow and held (part-time) the Chair of Computer Science at the

. Milner died of a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which ma ...

on 20 March 2010 in Cambridge. His wife, Lucy, died shortly before he did.

Contributions

Milner is generally regarded as having made three major contributions to

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

. He developed Logic for Computable Functions (LCF), one of the first tools for

automated theorem proving Automated theorem proving (also known as ATP or automated deduction) is a subfield of automated reasoning and mathematical logic dealing with proving mathematical theorems by computer programs. Automated reasoning over mathematical proof was a ...

. The language he developed for LCF, ML, was the first language with polymorphic

type inference Type inference refers to the automatic detection of the type of an expression in a formal language. These include programming languages and mathematical type systems, but also natural languages in some branches of computer science and linguistic ...

and type-safe

exception handling In computing and computer programming, exception handling is the process of responding to the occurrence of ''exceptions'' – anomalous or exceptional conditions requiring special processing – during the execution of a program. In general, an ...

. In a very different area, Milner also developed a theoretical framework for analyzing concurrent systems, the calculus of communicating systems (CCS), and its successor, the -calculus. At the time of his death, he was working on bigraphs, a formalism for

ubiquitous computing Ubiquitous computing (or "ubicomp") is a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using ...

subsuming CCS and the -calculus. He is also credited for rediscovering the

Hindley–Milner type system A Hindley–Milner (HM) type system is a classical type system for the lambda calculus with parametric polymorphism. It is also known as Damas–Milner or Damas–Hindley–Milner. It was first described by J. Roger Hindley and later rediscovere ...

Honors and awards

He was made 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 ...

and a Distinguished Fellow of the

British Computer Society Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957 BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, known as the British Computer Society until 2009, is a professional body and a learned society that represents those working in inf ...

in 1988. Milner received the ACM

in 1991. In 1994 he was inducted as a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the ACM. In 2004, the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh 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 established i ...

awarded Milner with a Royal Medal for his "bringing about public benefits on a global scale". In 2008, he was elected a Foreign Associate of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

for "fundamental contributions to computer science, including the development of LCF, ML, CCS, and the -calculus

The Royal Society Milner Award was named after him.

Selected publications

A Theory of Type Polymorphism in Programming, Robin Milner, Journal of Computer and System Sciences, August 1980
--> * ''A Calculus of Communicating Systems'', Robin Milner.

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 ...

( LNCS 92), 1980. * ''Communication and Concurrency'', Robin Milner.

Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science was a series of books on computer science published by Prentice Hall. The series' founding editor was Tony Hoare. Richard Bird subsequently took over editing the series. Many of the books in ...

, 1989. * ''The Definition of Standard ML'', Robin Milner,

Mads Tofte Mads Tofte (born 20 April 1959) is a Danish computer scientist who has contributed in particular to functional programming and the Standard ML programming language. Education Tofte was born in Lyngby, Denmark and grew up in Holbæk, Denmark. ...

, Robert Harper,

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publ ...

1990 * ''Commentary on Standard ML'', Robin Milner,

, MIT Press 1991. * ''The Definition of Standard ML'' (Revised), Robin Milner,

, Robert Harper, David MacQueen, MIT Press 1997. * ''Communicating and Mobile Systems: the -Calculus'', Robin Milner.

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 Pr ...

, 1999. * ''The Space and Motion of Communicating Agents'', Robin Milner,

, 2009. See also
Publications by Robin Milner
in

DBLP DBLP is a computer science bibliography website. Starting in 1993 at Universität Trier in Germany, it grew from a small collection of HTML files and became an organization hosting a database and logic programming bibliography site. Since Novem ...

References

External links

a short address by Milner on receiving Laurea Honoris Causa in Computer Science from the

University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in contin ...

, summarising some of his main works, 9 July 1997
Is informatics a science?
conference at ENS, 10 December 2007 {{DEFAULTSORT:Milner, Robin 1934 births 2010 deaths People from South Hams (district) People educated at Eton College Alumni of King's College, Cambridge British computer scientists Fellows of the Royal Society Turing Award laureates Academics of City, University of London Academics of Swansea University Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Academics of the University of Edinburgh Formal methods people Members of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Programming language designers Programming language researchers Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the British Computer Society Royal Engineers officers Members of the French Academy of Sciences Computer science writers Foreign associates of the National Academy of Engineering