John Alan Robinson

John Alan Robinson (2012)

John Alan Robinson , called Alan Robinson, (born March 9, 1930 in Halifax , Yorkshire , Great Britain; † August 5, 2016 in Portland , Maine , United States) was a British philosopher and logician who made important contributions to logic programming .

After completing his studies in Classical Antiquity at Cambridge University , he went to the USA in 1952. There he first studied philosophy at the University of Oregon and received the title Doctor of Philosophy in Princeton in 1956 . He then worked at the chemical company DuPont , where he learned programming and mathematics . In 1961 he moved to Rice University , where he continued to study mathematics.

In 1965 he published with "A machine-oriented logic based on the resolution principle" important principles for automatable resolution in logic . An algorithm for the unification of predicate logic formulas goes back to him , which is decisive in proving the unsatisfiability of a predicate logic formula.

His work has significantly influenced the development of the logic programming language Prolog . By Stephen Muggleton , Donald Michie and Koichi Furukawa Robinson was therefore referred to in a 1994 book as the founder of modern programmable logic.

At the request of Wolfgang Bibel he received the Humboldt Prize in 1994, which included a six-month stay at the Technical University of Darmstadt . In 1996 he received the Herbrand Award .

See also

• Resolvent method

Individual evidence

1. ^ CV John Alan Robinson at upm.es, accessed August 12, 2016
2. ^ Obituary , New York Times , accessed August 17, 2016
3. ↑ Leonhard Wolfgang Bible: Reflections before reflexes - memoirs of a researcher . 1st edition. Cuvillier Verlag, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-7369-9524-6 .