Philip Lee Wadler (born April 8, 1956) is an American computer scientist 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 fou ...

. He is the chair of

Theoretical Computer Science 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 circumscribe the ...

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 applying and composing functions. It is a declarative programming paradigm in which function definitions are trees of expressions that ...

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 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 mos ...

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).

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 o ...

degree in mathematics from Stanford University 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 t ...

degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1979. He completed his

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

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 (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. It was founded in 1957 as the Computing Laboratory. ...

) 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 development, research and scientific developm ...

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 inclu ...

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

theoretical computer science 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 circumscribe the ...

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'' 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 ...

. 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 (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