Andrew William Roscoe is a Scottish

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

. He was Head of the

Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford The Department of Computer Science is the computer science department of the University of Oxford, England, which is part of the university's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division. It was founded in 1957 as the Computing Laboratory. ...

from 2003 to 2014, and was a Professor of Computer Science. He was also

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

University College, Oxford University College, formally The Master and Fellows of the College of the Great Hall of the University commonly called University College in the University of Oxford and colloquially referred to as "Univ", is a Colleges of the University of Oxf ...

until 2024.

Education and career

Roscoe was born in

Dundee, Scotland Dundee (; ; or , ) is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, fourth-largest city in Scotland. The mid-year population estimate for the locality was . It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firt ...

. He studied for a degree in mathematics at University College, Oxford, from 1975 to 1978, graduating with the top mark for his year in the university. He went on to work at the Computing Laboratory and received his DPhil in 1982. He was appointed Tutorial Fellow at University College in 1983 and served as Senior Tutor from 1993 to 1997. He was head of the

Department of Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to applied disciplines (including the design and ...

2003-08 and 2009–14. In 2024, a lecture theatre in the Department of Computer Science was named after Roscoe.

Research

Professor Roscoe works in the area of

concurrency Concurrent means happening at the same time. Concurrency, concurrent, or concurrence may refer to: Law * Concurrence, in jurisprudence, the need to prove both ''actus reus'' and ''mens rea'' * Concurring opinion (also called a "concurrence"), a ...

theory, in particular the semantic underpinning of

Communicating Sequential Processes In computer science, communicating sequential processes (CSP) is a formal language for describing patterns of interaction in concurrent systems. It is a member of the family of mathematical theories of concurrency known as process algebras, or p ...

(CSP) and the associated

occam programming language occam is a programming language which is concurrent and builds on the communicating sequential processes (CSP) process algebra, Inmos document 72 occ 45 03 and shares many of its features. It is named after philosopher William of Ockham after ...

with Sir Tony Hoare.Roscoe, A.W., Jones, C.B. and Wood, K. (eds.), ''Reflections on the Work of C.A.R. Hoare''.

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

. (2010). He co-founded ''Formal Systems (Europe) Limited'' and worked on the algorithms for the ''

Failures-Divergence Refinement Failures-divergence refinement may refer to: * The mathematical relation of refinement in the failures/divergences model of communicating sequential processes * FDR (software), a refinement-checking software tool {{Disambiguation ...

(FDR)'' tool.

References

External links

Bill Roscoe home page
* * Living people Scientists from Dundee People educated at the High School of Dundee Alumni of University College, Oxford Scottish computer scientists Members of the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford Formal methods people Fellows of University College, Oxford Scottish scholars and academics 1956 births {{compu-bio-stub