Simon Peyton Jones (born 18 January 1958) 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 ...

who researches the

implementation Implementation is the realization of an application, execution of a plan, idea, scientific modelling, model, design, specification, Standardization, standard, algorithm, policy, or the Management, administration or management of a process or Goal ...

and

applications Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...

functional programming languages 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 map ...

, particularly lazy

functional programming In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by Function application, applying and Function composition (computer science), composing Function (computer science), functions. It is a declarat ...

Education

Peyton Jones graduated from the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in Electrical Sciences in 1979. During this time he was an undergraduate student of

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

, and subsequently went on to complete the

Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science Diploma in Computer Science, originally known as the Diploma in Numerical Analysis and Automatic Computing, was a conversion course in computer science offered by the University of Cambridge. It is equivalent to a master's degree in present-day nom ...

in 1980. He never did a PhD.

Career and research

Peyton Jones worked in industry for two years before serving as a

lecturer Lecturer is an academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. They may also conduct re ...

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

and, from 1990 to 1998, as a

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 ...

at the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

. From 1998 to 2021 he worked as a researcher at

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

Cambridge, England Cambridge ( ) is a city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of ...

. Since 2021 he has worked at

Epic Games Epic Games, Inc. is an American Video game developer, video game and software development, software developer and video game publisher, publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney (game developer), Tim Sween ...

as an engineering fellow. He is a major contributor to the design of the

Haskell Haskell () is a general-purpose, statically typed, purely functional programming language with type inference and lazy evaluation. Designed for teaching, research, and industrial applications, Haskell pioneered several programming language ...

programming language, and a lead developer of the

Glasgow Haskell Compiler The Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) is a native or machine code compiler for the functional programming language Haskell. It provides a cross-platform software environment for writing and testing Haskell code and supports many extensions, libra ...

(GHC). He is also co-creator of the programming language, designed for intermediate program representation between the language-specific front-end of a compiler and a general-purpose back-end code generator and optimiser. C-- is used in GHC. He was also a major contributor to the 1999 book ''Cybernauts Awake'', which explored the ethical and spiritual implications of the Internet. Peyton Jones chairs the

Computing At School Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientif ...

(CAS) group, an organisation which aims to promote the teaching of computer science at school. Following these efforts, in 2019 he was appointed chair of the newly founded UK

National Centre for Computing Education The National Centre for Computing Education is a government-funded initiative, offering teacher training and resources for computing. Function The National Centre for Computing Education provides professional development in computing education ...

. Peyton Jones has played a vital role in the development of new

Microsoft Excel Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet editor developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows, Windows, macOS, Android (operating system), Android, iOS and iPadOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a ...

features since 2003, when he published a paper on user-defined functions. In 2021,

anonymous function In computer programming, an anonymous function (function literal, expression or block) is a function definition that is not bound to an identifier. Anonymous functions are often arguments being passed to higher-order functions or used for const ...

s and

let expression In computer science, a "let" expression associates a function definition with a restricted scope. The "let" expression may also be defined in mathematics, where it associates a Boolean condition with a restricted scope. The "let" expression may ...

s were made available in the

Office 365 Microsoft 365 (previously called Office 365) is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, programs form ...

version of Excel as a beta feature.

Honours and awards

In 2004 he was inducted as a

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 ...

of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

for contributions to functional programming languages. In 2011 he was awarded membership in the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

(MAE). In 2011, he and

Simon Marlow Simon Marlow is a British computer scientist, programmer, author, and co-developer of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) for the programming language Haskell. He and Simon Peyton Jones won the SIGPLAN Programming Languages Software Award in 201 ...

were awarded the

SIGPLAN Programming Languages Software Award SIGPLAN is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group (SIG) on programming languages. This SIG explores programming language concepts and tools, focusing on design, implementation, practice, and theory. Its members are progra ...

for their work on GHC. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow in 2013 and honorary doctorates from the

University of Kent The University of Kent (formerly the University of Kent at Canterbury, abbreviated as UKC) is a Collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom. The university was granted its roya ...

and

University of Bath The University of Bath is a public research university in Bath, England. Bath received its royal charter in 1966 as Bath University of Technology, along with a number of other institutions following the Robbins Report. Like the University ...

in 2017. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016 One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: and a Distinguished Fellow of 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 ...

(DFBCS) in 2017. He received the ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award in 2016. Peyton Jones was appointed

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(OBE) in the

2022 Birthday Honours The 2022 Queen's Birthday Honours are appointments by some of the 15 Commonwealth realms of Queen Elizabeth II to Orders and decorations of the Commonwealth realms, various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those ...

for services to education and computer science. He also became a Distinguished Affiliate Scholar at Pembroke College Cambridge and a Distinguished Honorary Fellow at the University of Cambridge

Computer Laboratory A computer lab is a space where computer services are provided to a defined community. These are typically public libraries and academic institutions. Generally, users must follow a certain user policy to retain access to the computers. This usua ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Peyton Jones, Simon 1958 births Living people Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge British computer scientists Academics of University College London Academics of the University of Glasgow Functional programming Programming language researchers Microsoft employees Members of Academia Europaea 2004 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the British Computer Society Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge Officers of the Order of the British Empire