Robert Harper (computer scientist)

Robert William Harper, Jr. (born 1957[2]) is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who works in programming language research. Prior to his position at Carnegie Mellon, Harper was a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh.[3]

Robert Harper
Robert Harper in 2006
Born
Robert William Harper, Jr.

(1957-07-15) July 15, 1957 (age 67)
Other namesBob Harper
Education
Known for
Awards
  • ACM Fellow, 2005
  • ACM SIGPLAN Most Influential PLDI Paper, 2006
  • LICS Test of Time Award, 2007
  • ACM SIGPLAN Prog Lang Achievement Award, 2021
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
Institutions
Doctoral students
Websitewww.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/

Career

edit

Harper made major contributions to the design of the Standard ML programming language and the LF logical framework.

Harper was named an ACM Fellow in 2005 for his contributions to type systems for programming languages. In 2021, he received the ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award for his "foundational contributions to our understanding of type theory and its use in the design, specification, implementation, and verification of modern programming languages".[4]

Awards

edit
  • Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence, CMU.[6] for research on type-directed compilation.[9] (2001)
  • ACM SIGPLAN Most Influential PLDI Paper Award,[10] for the paper TIL: a type-directed optimizing compiler for ML.[11] (2006)
  • LICS Test-of-Time Award Winner,[12] for the paper A Framework for defining logics.[13] (2007)

Books

edit
  • Robin Milner, Mads Tofte, Robert Harper, and David MacQueen. The Definition of Standard ML (Revised). MIT Press, 1997.
  • Robert Harper (editor). Types in Compilation. Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 2071, 2001.
  • Robert Harper. Type Systems for Programming Languages. Draft, 2000.
  • Robert Harper. Programming in Standard ML. Working Draft, 2013.
  • Robert Harper. Practical Foundations for Programming Languages, 2007 draft. 2nd edition: ISBN 1107150302, 2016.

Personal life

edit

In 2003–2008, Harper hosted the progressive talk show Left Out on WRCT-FM with fellow host and Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science faculty member Danny Sleator.

References

edit
  1. ^ a b c Robert Harper at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ^ Harper, Robert (2016). Practical Foundations for Programming Languages (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. iv.
  3. ^ Robert Harper on LinkedIn
  4. ^ "Programming Languages Achievement Award". www.sigplan.org. Retrieved 2022-01-27.
  5. ^ "SCS Faculty Awards". www.cs.cmu.edu. Archived from the original on 2002-04-04. Retrieved 2024-03-19.
  6. ^ "The Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence – Previous Winners". www.cs.cmu.edu. Archived from the original on 2024-02-05. Retrieved 2024-03-16.
  7. ^ "Compiling with Types" (PDF). www.cs.cmu.edu. Retrieved 2024-03-16.
  8. ^ Harper, R.; Morrisett, G. (January 1995). "Compiling polymorphism with intensional type analysis". POPL '95: Proc 22nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symp on Principles of Programming Languages. San Francisco, Cal, USA: ACM. pp. 130–141. doi:10.1145/199448.199475. ISBN 978-0-89791-692-9.
  9. ^ The research for which this award was given resulted in Greg Morrisett's Ph.D. thesis, with Harper as co-advisor,[7] a paper by Morrisett and Harper,[8] and a few other publications.
  10. ^ "Most Influential PLDI Paper Award". www.sigplan.org. Retrieved 2024-03-16.
  11. ^ Tarditi, D.; Morrisett, G.; Cheng, P.; Harper, R.; Lee, P. (May 1996). "TIL: a type-directed optimizing compiler for ML". ACM SIGPLAN Notices. 31 (5): 181–192. doi:10.1145/249069.231414.
  12. ^ "ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science". Archived from the original on 2024-03-13. Retrieved 2024-03-16.
  13. ^ Harper, R.; Honsell, F.; Plotkin, G.D. (June 1987). "A Framework for defining logics". Proc Second Annual IEEE Symp on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 1987). Ithaca, New York: IEEE Computer Society Press. pp. 194–204.
edit