Kenneth ("Ken") Arthur Robinson (30 July 1938 – 5 September 2020) was an Australian

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 has been called "The Father of

Formal Methods In computer science, formal methods are mathematics, mathematically rigorous techniques for the formal specification, specification, development, Program analysis, analysis, and formal verification, verification of software and computer hardware, ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

Early life and education

Ken Robinson was born in 1938. He received his BE degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

in 1959 and a BSc degree in

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

and

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

in 1961, both from the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

Career

Robinson worked at the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW) is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was established in 1949. The university comprises seven faculties, through which it offers bachelor's, master's and docto ...

(UNSW) from 1965 to 2012, initially in the Department of Electronic Computation under Professor Murray Allen. During 1987–1989 he was Head of the Department of Computer Science and during 1996–2000 he was Head of the Department of

Software Engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...

. He held visiting positions in the United Kingdom at the

University of Southampton The University of Southampton (abbreviated as ''Soton'' in post-nominal letters) is a public university, public research university in Southampton, England. Southampton is a founding member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universit ...

(1978–79), the Programming Research Group at

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a 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 second-oldest continuously operating u ...

as a visiting fellow at Wolfson College (1985–86), the Oxford University Computing Laboratory and B-Core (1999), and Royal Holloway College (

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

) and 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 ...

(2003). In 1971, Robinson's courses in computer science included

ALGOL W ALGOL W is a programming language. It is based on a proposal for ALGOL X by Niklaus Wirth and Tony Hoare as a successor to ALGOL 60. ALGOL W is a relatively simple upgrade of the original ALGOL 60, adding string, bitstring, complex number a ...

(from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

), WATFOR (a student version of FORTRAN from the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

), Plago (

PL/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language initially developed by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. It has b ...

for students, from

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

SNOBOL SNOBOL ("StriNg Oriented and symBOlic Language") is a series of programming languages developed between 1962 and 1967 at AT&T Bell Laboratories by David J. Farber, Ralph Griswold and Ivan P. Polonsky, culminating in SNOBOL4. It was one of a ...

(from

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

), and

IBM System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applicati ...

assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

. The latter used an assembler program written by Robinson since the

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

assembler was too slow for student use. In 1974, the Department of Computer Science at UNSW had a

PDP-11 The PDP–11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers originally sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the late 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of a ...

/40 minicomputer from

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

, used for teaching and administration. Ken Robinson wrote to

Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He created the C programming language and the Unix operating system and B language with long-time colleague Ken Thompson. Ritchie and Thomp ...

requesting a copy of the

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 ...

operating system. This arrived in 1975, making UNSW the first university outside the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

to run Unix regularly. Robinson's later research and teaching was especially centred around

formal methods In computer science, formal methods are mathematics, mathematically rigorous techniques for the formal specification, specification, development, Program analysis, analysis, and formal verification, verification of software and computer hardware, ...

, particularly the

B-Method The B method is a method of software development based on B, a tool-supported formal method based on an abstract machine notation, used in the development of computer software. Overview B was originally developed in the 1980s by Jean-Raymond Abr ...

, Event-B, and the

Rodin tool The Rodin tool is a software tool for formal modelling in Event-B. It was developed as part of several collaborative European Union projects, including initially the RODIN project (2004–2007). Overview Event-B is a notation and method develope ...

. Robinson designed the initial BE Software Engineering program at UNSW and with the program coordinator subsequently. He also initiated the BE Computer Engineering program. In 1990, he received the University of NSW Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence.

Personal life and death

Robinson died on 5 September 2020. He was married with a family.

Selected publications

* * * *

Online

Reasons for Software Engineering Program Proposal
(Ken Robinson, UNSW 1990's)
40 Years at UNSW and the Birth of CSE, A Search for a Discipline
(Ken Robinson, UNSW, 28 January 28, 2011)
Draft Computer Science and Engineering Timeline 1955 – 2007, Revision date: March 19 19:43
(Ken Robinson, UNSW, 19 March 2007)
Reasons for need for Computer Engineering program
(Ken Robinson, UNSW, circa 1988)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Ken 1938 births 2020 deaths University of Sydney alumni Australian computer scientists Formal methods people Software engineering researchers Academic staff of the University of New South Wales