Alain Colmerauer (24 January 1941 – 12 May 2017) was a French

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

. He was a professor at

Aix-Marseille University Aix-Marseille University (AMU; french: Aix-Marseille Université; formally incorporated as ''Université d'Aix-Marseille'') is a public research university located in the Provence region of southern France. It was founded in 1409 when Louis II o ...

, and the creator of the

logic programming Logic programming is a programming paradigm which is largely based on formal logic. Any program written in a logic programming language is a set of sentences in logical form, expressing facts and rules about some problem domain. Major logic prog ...

language

Prolog Prolog is a logic programming language associated with artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. Prolog has its roots in first-order logic, a formal logic, and unlike many other programming languages, Prolog is intended primarily ...

Early life

Alain Colmerauer was born on 24 January 1941 in

Carcassonne Carcassonne (, also , , ; ; la, Carcaso) is a French fortified city in the department of Aude, in the region of Occitanie. It is the prefecture of the department. Inhabited since the Neolithic, Carcassonne is located in the plain of the ...

. He graduated from the

Grenoble Institute of Technology The Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP) (''Institut polytechnique de Grenoble'', ''Groupe Grenoble INP'' and before INPG) is a French technological university system consisting of eight engineering and management schools. Grenoble INP ...

, and he earned a PhD from the Ensimag in

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

Career

Colmerauer spent 1967–1970 as assistant professor at the

University of Montreal A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

, where he created

Q-Systems Q-systems are a method of directed graph transformations according to given grammar rules, developed at the Université de Montréal by Alain Colmerauer in 1967–70 for use in natural language processing. The Université de Montréal's machine t ...

, one of the earliest linguistic formalisms used in the development of the TAUM-METEO

machine translation Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...

prototype. Developing Prolog III in 1984, he was one of the main founders of the field of

constraint logic programming Constraint logic programming is a form of constraint programming, in which logic programming is extended to include concepts from constraint satisfaction. A constraint logic program is a logic program that contains constraints in the body of clau ...

. Colmerauer became an associate professor at

in Luminy in 1970. He was promoted to full professor in 1979. From 1993 to 1995, he was head of the Laboratoire d'Informatique de Marseille (LIM), a joint laboratory of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Université de Provence and the Université de la Méditerranée. Despite retiring as emeritus professor in 2006, he remained a member of the artificial intelligence taskforce in Luminy. Colmerauer won an award from the regional council of

Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (; or , ; commonly shortened to PACA; en, Provence-Alps-French Riviera, italic=yes; also branded as Région Sud) is one of the eighteen administrative regions of France, the far southeastern on the mainland. Its pref ...

, and in 1985 the Michel Monpetit Award, from the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific me ...

. In 1986, he was made a knight of the

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon, ...

by the French government. He became Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in 1991, and received the Association for Constraint Programming's Research Excellence Award in 2008. He was also a correspondent of the

in the area of mathematics.

Death

Colmerauer died on 12 May 2017. — According to this obituary, Alain Colmerauer died on 15 May.ensimag.grenoble-inp.fr
(in French)

References

External links

* French computer scientists Programming language designers 1941 births 2017 deaths Members of the French Academy of Sciences Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Université de Montréal faculty Aix-Marseille University faculty Grenoble Institute of Technology alumni People from Carcassonne 20th-century French scientists 21st-century French scientists 20th-century French engineers 21st-century French engineers {{France-compu-bio-stub