Robin Popplestone
Robin John Popplestone | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 14 April 2004 | (aged 65)
Education | Queen's University Belfast, University of Manchester, University of Leeds |
Known for | COWSEL (POP-1), POP-2, POP-11, Poplog; Freddy II |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Computer science, artificial intelligence, robotics |
Institutions | University of Edinburgh, University of Massachusetts Amherst |
Doctoral students | Yanxi Liu |
Robin John Popplestone (9 December 1938 in
Biography
Robin Popplestone was born in Bristol in 1938. After World War II his family moved to Belfast.[1] He received an honours degree in mathematics from Queen's University Belfast in 1960.[2] He started a PhD at the University of Manchester before moving to the University of Leeds. His project was to develop a program for automated theorem proving, but he got caught up in using the university computer to design a boat.[1] He built the boat and set sail for the University of Edinburgh, where he had been offered a research position. A storm hit while crossing the North Sea, and the boat sank. A widely believed story about Popplestone was that he never completed his PhD in mathematics because he lost his thesis manuscript in the boat, although Popplestone refused to corroborate this.[3][1] The early part of his professional career was spent at the University of Edinburgh (1965-1985) and the later part at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1985-2001). In 1990, he was elected a Founding Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.[4] Due to illness, he retired in 2001 to the Glasgow area. He died in 2004 after a 10-year illness with prostate cancer.[2]
References
- ^ a b c d Robin Popplestone obituary The Scotsman, 22 April 2004
- ^ a b Sisu, Diana. "School of Informatics: Robin Popplestone Obituary". www.inf.ed.ac.uk. University of Edinburgh.
- ^ "In Memoriam: Robin Popplestone (1938-2004)". College of Information and Computer Sciences. University of Massachusetts Amherst. 1 January 2007. Retrieved 24 May 2017.
- ^ "Elected AAAI Fellows". AAAI. Retrieved 24 May 2017.
External links
- Robin Popplestone at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- A remembrance of Robin Popplestone
- Popplestones' books at archive.org