Arthur John Robin Gorell Milner (13 January 1934 – 20 March 2010) was a

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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 a

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winner.Obituary – Professor Robin Milner: computer scientist
''

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'', 31 March 2010.

Life, education and career

Milner was born in

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, near

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into a military family. He gained a King's Scholarship to

Eton College Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...

in 1947, and was awarded the Tomline Prize (the highest prize in Mathematics at Eton) in 1952. Subsequently, he served in the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is the engineering arm of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces ...

, attaining the rank of Second Lieutenant. He then enrolled at

King's College, Cambridge King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a List of colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces ...

, graduating in 1957. Milner first worked as a schoolteacher then as a

programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

Ferranti Ferranti International PLC or simply Ferranti was a UK-based electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century, from 1885 until its bankruptcy in 1993. At its peak, Ferranti was a significant player in power grid system ...

, before entering academia at City University, London, then Swansea University,

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, and from 1973 at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

, where he was a co-founder of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science (LFCS). He returned to

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, 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 Unit ...

as the head of the Computer Laboratory in 1995 from which he eventually stepped down, although he was still at the laboratory. From 2009, Milner was a Scottish Informatics & Computer Science Alliance Advanced Research Fellow and held (part-time) the chair of computer science at the

. Milner died of a

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...

on 20 March 2010 in Cambridge. His wife, Lucy, died shortly before he did.

Contributions

Milner is generally regarded as having made three major contributions to

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

. He developed Logic for Computable Functions (LCF), one of the first tools for

automated theorem proving Automated theorem proving (also known as ATP or automated deduction) is a subfield of automated reasoning and mathematical logic dealing with proving mathematical theorems by computer programs. Automated reasoning over mathematical proof was a majo ...

. The language he developed for LCF, ML, was the first language with polymorphic

type inference Type inference, sometimes called type reconstruction, refers to the automatic detection of the type of an expression in a formal language. These include programming languages and mathematical type systems, but also natural languages in some bran ...

, type-safe

exception handling In computing and computer programming, exception handling is the process of responding to the occurrence of ''exceptions'' – anomalous or exceptional conditions requiring special processing – during the execution of a program. In general, an ...

, and an automatically inferred type system, using algorithm W. Milner also developed two theoretical frameworks for analyzing concurrent systems, the calculus of communicating systems (CCS), and its successor, the -calculus. At the time of his death, he was working on bigraphs, a formalism for ubiquitous computing subsuming CCS and the -calculus. He is also credited for rediscovering the Hindley–Milner type system.

Honours and awards

He was made a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

and a Distinguished Fellow of the

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in 1988. Milner received the ACM

in 1991. In 1994 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 ACM. In 2004, the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was establis ...

awarded Milner with a Royal Medal for his "bringing about public benefits on a global scale". In 2008, he was elected a Foreign Associate of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

for "fundamental contributions to computer science, including the development of LCF, ML, CCS, and the -calculus

The Royal Society Milner Award and the ACM

SIGPLAN 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 ...

Robin Milner Young Researcher Award are both named after him.

Selected publications

A Theory of Type Polymorphism in Programming, Robin Milner, Journal of Computer and System Sciences, August 1980
--> * ''A Calculus of Communicating Systems'', Robin Milner.

Springer-Verlag Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in ...

( LNCS 92), 1980. * ''Communication and Concurrency'', Robin Milner. Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science, 1989. * ''The Definition of Standard ML'', Robin Milner, Mads Tofte, Robert Harper,

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

1990 * ''Commentary on Standard ML'', Robin Milner, Mads Tofte, MIT Press 1991. * ''The Definition of Standard ML'' (Revised), Robin Milner, Mads Tofte, Robert Harper, David MacQueen, MIT Press 1997. * ''Communicating and Mobile Systems: the -Calculus'', Robin Milner.

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

, 1999. * ''The Space and Motion of Communicating Agents'', Robin Milner,

, 2009. See also
Publications by Robin Milner
in

DBLP DBLP is a computer science bibliography website. Starting in 1993 at Universität Trier in Germany, it grew from a small collection of HTML files and became an organization hosting a database and logic programming bibliography site. Since Novem ...

References

External links

a short address by Milner on receiving Laurea Honoris Causa in computer science from the

University of Bologna The University of Bologna (, abbreviated Unibo) is a Public university, public research university in Bologna, Italy. Teaching began around 1088, with the university becoming organised as guilds of students () by the late 12th century. It is the ...

, summarising some of his main works, 9 July 1997
Is informatics a science?
conference at

École normale supérieure (Paris) The – PSL (; also known as ENS, , Ulm or ENS Paris) is a ''grande école'' in Paris, France. It is one of the constituent members of Paris Sciences et Lettres University (PSL). Due to its selectivity, historical role, and influence within F ...

(ENS), 10 December 2007 {{DEFAULTSORT:Milner, Robin 1934 births 2010 deaths People from South Hams (district) People educated at Eton College Alumni of King's College, Cambridge British computer scientists Fellows of the Royal Society Turing Award laureates Academics of City, University of London Academics of Swansea University Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Academics of the University of Edinburgh Formal methods people Members of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory 1994 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Programming language designers Programming language researchers Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows of the British Computer Society Royal Engineers officers Members of the French Academy of Sciences Computer science writers Foreign associates of the National Academy of Engineering