Corrado Böhm

Corrado Böhm (born 17 January 1923), Professor Emeritus at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", is a computer scientist known especially for his contributions to the theory of structured programming, constructive mathematics, combinatory logic, lambda-calculus, and the semantics and implementation of functional programming languages. In his PhD dissertation (in Mathematics, at ETH Zurich, 1951; published in 1954) he describes for the first time a full meta-circular compiler, that is a translation mechanism of a programming language, written in that same language. His most influential contribution is the so-called structured program theorem, published in 1966 together with Giuseppe Jacopini. In lambda-calculus, he established an important separation theorem between normal forms. Together with Alessandro Berarducci, he demonstrated an isomorphism between the strictly-positive algebraic data types and the polymorphic lambda-terms, otherwise known as Böhm–Berarducci encoding.^[1]

A special issue of Theoretical Computer Science was dedicated to him in 1993, on his 70th birthday. He is the recipient of the 2001 EATCS Award for a distinguished career in theoretical computer science.

Selected publications

• C. Böhm, "Calculatrices digitales. Du déchiffrage des formules mathématiques par la machine même dans la conception du programme", Annali di Mat. pura e applicata, serie IV, tomo XXXVII, 1–51, 1954.
• C. Böhm, "On a family of Turing machines and the related programming language", ICC Bull., 3, 185–194, July 1964.

  Introduced P′′, the first imperative language without GOTO to be proved Turing-complete.

• C. Böhm, G. Jacopini, "Flow diagrams, Turing Machines and Languages with only Two Formation Rules", Comm. of the ACM, 9(5): 366–371,1966.
• C. Böhm, "Alcune proprietà delle forme normali nel K calcolo", Pubbl. INAC, n. 696, Roma, 1968.
• C. Böhm, A. Berarducci, "Automatic Synthesis of typed Lambda-programs on Term Algebras", Theoretical Computer Science, 39: 135–154, 1985.
• C. Böhm, "Functional Programming and Combinatory algebras", MFCS, Carlsbad, Czechoslovakia, eds M.P. Chytil, L. Janiga and V. Koubek, LNCS 324, 14–26, 1988.

References

• Vitae (University of Rome)

External links

• Corrado Böhm at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• "A Collection of Contributions in Honour of Corrado Böhm on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday", Theoretical Computer Science, Volume 121, Numbers 1&2, 1993.
• Corrado Bohm's personal page.