Philip Lee Wadler (born April 8, 1956) is an American

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 ...

known for his contributions to programming language design and

type theory In mathematics, logic, and computer science, a type theory is the formal presentation of a specific type system, and in general type theory is the academic study of type systems. Some type theories serve as alternatives to set theory as a foundat ...

. He is the chair of

Theoretical Computer Science Theoretical computer science (TCS) is a subset of general computer science and mathematics that focuses on mathematical aspects of computer science such as the theory of computation, lambda calculus, and type theory. It is difficult to circumsc ...

at the

Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science The Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science (LFCS) is a research institute within the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. It was founded in 1987 and is a community of theoretical computer scientists with i ...

School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh The School of Informatics is an academic unit of the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, responsible for research, teaching, outreach and commercialisation in informatics. It was created in 1998 from the former Department of Artificial Intelli ...

. He has contributed to the theory behind

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 declar ...

and the use of

monads in functional programming In functional programming, a monad is a software design pattern with a structure that combines program fragments ( functions) and wraps their return values in a type with additional computation. In addition to defining a wrapping monadic type, m ...

, the design of the purely functional language

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 has pioneered a number of programming lan ...

, and the

XQuery XQuery (XML Query) is a query and functional programming language that queries and transforms collections of structured and unstructured data, usually in the form of XML, text and with vendor-specific extensions for other data formats (JSON, b ...

declarative query language. In 1984, he created the Orwell programming language. Wadler was involved in adding

generic Generic or generics may refer to: In business * Generic term, a common name used for a range or class of similar things not protected by trademark * Generic brand, a brand for a product that does not have an associated brand or trademark, other ...

types to

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

5.0. He is also author of the paper ''Theorems for free!'' that gave rise to much research on functional language optimization (see also

Parametricity In programming language theory, parametricity is an abstract uniformity property enjoyed by parametrically polymorphic functions, which captures the intuition that all instances of a polymorphic function act the same way. Idea Consider this exa ...

Education

Wadler received a

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

degree in

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1977, and a

Master of Science A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

degree in Computer Science from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

in 1979. He completed his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in 1984. His thesis was entitled ''Listlessness is Better than Laziness'' and was supervised by Nico Habermann.

Research and career

Wadler's research interests are in

programming languages 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 ...

. Wadler was a

research fellow A research fellow is an academic research position at a university or a similar research institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a pr ...

at the

Programming Research Group The Programming Research Group (PRG) was part of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory (OUCL) in Oxford, England, along with the Numerical Analysis Group, until OUCL became the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Department ...

(part of the

Oxford University Computing Laboratory 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, University of Oxford, Mathematical, Physical and Life ...

) and St Cross College, Oxford during 1983–87. He was progressively lecturer, reader, and professor at the

University of Glasgow , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

from 1987 to 1996. Wadler was a member of technical staff at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

Lucent Technologies Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the divestiture of the former AT&T Technologies business u ...

(1996–99) and then at

Avaya Avaya Holdings Corp., often shortened to Avaya (), is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, that provides cloud communications and workstream collaboration services. The company's platform includ ...

Labs (1999–2003). Since 2003, he has been professor of

theoretical computer science Theoretical computer science (TCS) is a subset of general computer science and mathematics that focuses on mathematical aspects of computer science such as the theory of computation, lambda calculus, and type theory. It is difficult to circumsc ...

in the School of Informatics at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

. Wadler was editor of the ''

Journal of Functional Programming The ''Journal of Functional Programming'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the design, implementation, and application of functional programming languages, spanning the range from mathematical theory to industrial practice. Topics ...

'' from 1990 to 2004. Wadler is currently working on a new functional language designed for writing

web applications A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

, called ''Links''. He has supervised numerous doctoral students to completion. Since 2003, Wadler has been a professor of

at the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science at the

and is the chair of Theoretical Computer Science. He is also a member of the university's Blockchain Technology Laboratory. He has a h-index of 72 with 26,874 citations at

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

. As of December 2018 Wadler was area leader for programming languages at IOHK, the blockchain engineering company developing Cardano.

Awards and honours

Wadler received the ''Most Influential POPL Paper Award'' in 2003 for the 1993

POPL The annual ACM SIGPLAN- SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL) is an academic conference in the field of computer science, with focus on fundamental principles in the design, definition, analysis, and implementation of prog ...

Symposium paper ''Imperative Functional Programming'', jointly with

Simon Peyton Jones Simon Peyton Jones (born 18 January 1958) is a British computer scientist who researches the implementation and applications of functional programming languages, particularly lazy functional programming. Education Peyton Jones graduated fr ...

. In 2005, he was elected

Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This socie ...

. In 2007, he was inducted as an

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing * ...

by 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 member ...

(ACM).ACM fellowship award page
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References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wadler, Philip 1956 births Living people Stanford University alumni Carnegie Mellon University alumni American computer scientists British computer scientists Members of the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford Fellows of St Cross College, Oxford Academics of the University of Glasgow Scientists at Bell Labs Academics of the University of Edinburgh Functional programming Programming language researchers Formal methods people Academic journal editors Computer science writers American textbook writers American male non-fiction writers Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery American expatriates in the United Kingdom People associated with Cardano