Richard Simpson Bird (4 February 1943 – 4 April 2022) was a Supernumerary Fellow of Computation at Lincoln College,

University of Oxford 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 world's second-oldest university in contin ...

, in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the Un ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, and former director of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory (now 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. ...

). Bird's research interests lay in

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

design and

functional programming In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by applying and composing functions. It is a declarative programming paradigm in which function definitions are trees of expressions that ...

, and he was known as a regular contributor to the '' Journal of Functional Programming'' and the author of ''Introduction to Functional Programming using Haskell'' and other books. His name is associated with the Bird–Meertens formalism, a

calculus Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematics, mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizati ...

for deriving programs from specifications in a functional programming style. Formerly, Bird was at the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...

. He was a member of the

International Federation for Information Processing The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) is a global organisation for researchers and professionals working in the field of computing to conduct research, develop standards and promote information sharing. Established in 196 ...

(IFIP)

IFIP Working Group 2.1 IFIP Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi is a working group of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). IFIP WG 2.1 was formed as the body responsible for the continued support and maintenance of the progra ...

on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi, which specified, supports, and maintains the

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming l ...

ALGOL 60 ALGOL 60 (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1960'') is a member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages. It followed on from ALGOL 58 which had introduced code blocks and the begin and end pairs for delimiting them, representing a k ...

and

ALGOL 68 ALGOL 68 (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1968'') is an imperative programming language that was conceived as a successor to the ALGOL 60 programming language, designed with the goal of a much wider scope of application and more rigorously ...

References

External links

* , laboratory * * 1943 births Living people English computer scientists English non-fiction writers Computer science writers Members of the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford Fellows of Lincoln College, Oxford Academics of the University of Reading Programming language researchers Formal methods people English male non-fiction writers {{Compu-bio-stub