RIP: Robin Milner | Hacker News Reader

RIP: Robin Milner

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129 pointsfogus17 comments

For anyone that uses an ML (e.g. OCaml), Haskell or Scala, Milner was responsible for the Hindley-Milner type system and inference algorithm that sits at the foundation of these languages.

It ignited a wave of research into type theory that continues to this day, yet in many ways, Hindley-Milner is still the most significant contribution to the field.

I remember reading his original paper on polymorphic typing for my qualifiers and being struck by the elegance and approachability of his writing.

Well worth a read.

Any chance you could post some info about the paper? I've been itching to learn more about how type inferencing (especially polymorphic type inferencing) works.

EDIT: I don't know if it's the paper you were referring to, but I did find this: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/pag/6.883/readings/p207-damas.pd...

Milner, Robin (1978), "A Theory of Type Polymorphism in Programming", Jcss 17: 348–375

I don't know if there's a free copy online anywhere.

The Damas-Milner paper is the sequel; it presents an alternate algorithm for type inference.

Benjamin Pierce's "Orange Book" is one of the best references now.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=A+Theory+of+Type+Polymor...

First link.

It's almost impossible to over-state his contributions to computer science, particularly within programming languages, theorem proving and concurrency theory. I never met him, but I have followed and admired his work for some time, and this is a real loss to the community.

More information on his incredible contributions to computer science: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Milner

One of the references in the Wikipedia article is this long interview covering the major points of his life and work:

http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/users/mfb21/interviews/m...

I purchased 'Communicating and Mobil Systems: the Pi-Calculus' last week. http://www.amazon.com/Communicating-Mobile-Systems-Robin-Mil.... This is the first computing theory book I have read. It's quite readable and very well written.

Is it so that CS-books face an increase in value when the author have a passed away? Kinda like with art, where the author/artist never sees the pleasure of economical benefits during his/hers lifespan. But when death occurs -- that will be the ultimate marketing effort as we can take the time and sum up a person intellectual contributions....hmm..does this wanna make you work harder or what?

From Wikipedia .. Doctoral advisor None, as Milner never did a PhD[1] Doctoral students - about 19

Robin Milner was indeed one of a kind. One of the Great Masters of Computing, for sure. I'm currently taking a class on models for Concurrent Computing, and the first subject is Milner's CCS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_communicating_syste...

The way he thinks about processes, communication and synchronization is just beautiful. When I was able to "prove" that the implementation of a two-bit buffer as a chain of two one-bit buffers actually behaves as specified, it was as enlightening as when I first saw a higher order function in Scheme.

That is sad news.

I guess the annual lecture at Edinburgh will be a memorial lecture now http://www.lfcs.inf.ed.ac.uk/events/milner-lecture.

How very, very sad! He gave us a lecture just two years ago...

Died from sorrow, not from old age.

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