Michael ("Mike") William Shields (20 January 1950 – 24 September 2023) was a British

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 ...

Overview

Mike Shields undertook research on

concurrent system Concurrency refers to the ability of a system to execute multiple tasks through simultaneous execution or time-sharing (context switching), sharing resources and managing interactions. Concurrency improves responsiveness, throughput, and scalabi ...

s with Peter E. Lauer at the

University of Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a public university, public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick un ...

in the late 1970s. For most of his career, Shields was an academic in the Department of Computing at the

University of Surrey The University of Surrey is a public research university in Guildford, Surrey, England. The university received its Royal Charter, royal charter in 1966, along with a Plate glass university, number of other institutions following recommendations ...

Guildford Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, England, around south-west of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The nam ...

, southern

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. He joined in 1980 and retired in 2006 as a Reader. His research contributions were in

theoretical computer science Theoretical computer science is a subfield of computer science and mathematics that focuses on the Abstraction, abstract and mathematical foundations of computation. It is difficult to circumscribe the theoretical areas precisely. The Associati ...

, especially concerning concurrency. In particular, he had written books on

automata theory Automata theory is the study of abstract machines and automata, as well as the computational problems that can be solved using them. It is a theory in theoretical computer science with close connections to cognitive science and mathematical l ...

and the

semantics Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computing, computation in which many calculations or Process (computing), processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. ...

. A meeting was held in 2006 at the

British Computer Society image:Maurice Vincent Wilkes 1980 (3).jpg, Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957. The British Computer Society (BCS), branded BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, since 2009, is a professional body and a learned ...

's offices in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

to celebrate Shields' contribution to computer science (his "''innovative and elegant foundational work on models of concurrency''") on his retirement. He subsequently moved to

Malta Malta, officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe located in the Mediterranean Sea, between Sicily and North Africa. It consists of an archipelago south of Italy, east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The two ...

in his retirement.

F. X. Reid

F. X. Reid (aka FXR) was a

pen name A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...

that Shields sometimes used in his more humorous writings and even within his serious work. Reid was a long-time contributor to the

's FACS Specialist Group ''

FACS FACTS BCS-FACS is the British Computer Society, BCS ''Formal Aspects of Computing Science'' Specialist Group. Overview The FACS group, inaugurated on 16 March 1978, organizes meetings for its members and others on formal methods and related computer s ...

'' newsletter in the past. For example, he was an enthusiast for the COMEFROM statement and an expert on its semantics. Apparently reports of FXR's death in 2006 were untrue, and his musings continued after this time in the newsletter. F. X. Reid's most widely known work is "''The Song of Hakawatha''," a

parody A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, e ...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include the poems " Paul Revere's Ride", '' The Song of Hiawatha'', and '' Evangeline''. He was the first American to comp ...

's poem ''

The Song of Hiawatha ''The Song of Hiawatha'' is an 1855 epic poem in trochaic tetrameter by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which features Native American characters. The epic relates the fictional adventures of an Ojibwe warrior named Hiawatha and the tragedy of his lo ...

'' containing references to hacking,

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

and

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

s. F. X. Reid has also been mentioned in computer science books. Reid has been quoted as saying ''In program proving, only the presence of bugs in one's proof is ascertainable, not their absence'', similar to but not the same as a well-known quotation by E. W. Dijkstra about

software testing Software testing is the act of checking whether software satisfies expectations. Software testing can provide objective, independent information about the Quality (business), quality of software and the risk of its failure to a User (computin ...

Books

Michael W. Shields published a number of books including: * * *

References

External links

* * 1950 births 2023 deaths Academics of the University of Surrey English computer scientists British theoretical computer scientists Formal methods people {{UK-compu-bio-stub