Roland Carl Backhouse (born 18 August 1948) is 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 ...

and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

. , he is

Emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

of Computing Science at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

Early life and education

Backhouse was born and raised in the

Thorntree Thorntree is a housing estate in east Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, England. The former Thorntree Ward's population was 6,290, at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census. Since 2015, the estate shares a ward with Brambles Farm. The housin ...

district of Middlesbrough, an industrial town in the north-east of England. In 1959, he won a place at the then all-male Acklam Hall Grammar School before going on to

Churchill College, Cambridge Churchill College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but retains a strong interest in the arts ...

, in 1966. His

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

(Ph.D.) was completed under the supervision of Jim Cunningham at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

Career

Backhouse's career has included

Royal Aircraft Establishment The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), bef ...

(1969–1970),

Heriot-Watt University Heriot-Watt University () is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was established in 1821 as the School of Arts of Edinburgh, the world's first mechanics' institute, and was subsequently granted university status by roya ...

(1973–1982),

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public university, public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, it is one of the original plate glass university, plate glass universities. The university comprises three camp ...

(1982–1986). He was formerly Professor of Computer Science at the

University of Groningen The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; , abbreviated as RUG) is a Public university#Continental Europe, public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen (city), Groningen, Netherlands. Founded in 1614, th ...

(1986–1990) and

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology (), Abbreviation, abbr. TU/e, is a public university, public technical university in the Netherlands, situated in Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its Bachelor of Science, BS ...

(1990–1999) in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, before his position at the University of Nottingham. 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 19 ...

(IFIP) IFIP Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi, which specified, maintains, and supports the

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

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 ...

and

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

Personal life

Backhouse is married to Hilary, née Mitchell. They have three sons, Kevin, Andrew, and

David David (; , "beloved one") was a king of ancient Israel and Judah and the third king of the United Monarchy, according to the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. The Tel Dan stele, an Aramaic-inscribed stone erected by a king of Aram-Dam ...

Academic interests

His research interests lie in the mathematics of program construction and

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

ic problem solving. Together with Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut (1953—1994), he began the biennial series of conferences on the Mathematics of Program Construction, the first of which was held in 1989.

References

Publications

Books

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Books edited

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Selected papers

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External links

*
The DBLP Computer Science Bibliography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Backhouse, Roland Carl 1948 births Living people People from Middlesbrough Alumni of Churchill College, Cambridge Alumni of Imperial College London Academics of the University of Nottingham 20th-century British mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians