Martin Richards (computer scientist)

Martin Richards
Born 21 July 1940[1]
Fields Programming languages
Institutions University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
Alma mater University of Cambridge
Thesis The design and implementation of CPL-like programming languages (1967)
Doctoral students Eben Upton[2]
Jeremy Peter Bennett[3][4]
Known for Basic Combined Programming Language
Website
www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mr10

Martin Richards (born 21 July 1940) is a British computer scientist known for his development of the BCPL programming language[5] which is both part of early research into portable software, and the ancestor of the B programming language invented by Ken Thompson in early versions of Unix and which Dennis Ritchie in turn used as the basis of his widely used C programming language.

Education

Richards studied mathematics as an undergraduate student at the University of Cambridge and took the Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science. His PhD was on programming language design and implementation.[4][6] He was a senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory until his retirement in 2007.

Research

In addition to BCPL Richards' work[7] includes the development of the TRIPOS[8] portable operating system.

He was awarded the IEEE Computer Society's Computer Pioneer Award in 2003 for "pioneering system software portability through the programming language BCPL".[9]

Richards is a fellow of St Johns College at the University of Cambridge.

References

  1. ↑ Cf. British Library catalogue entry for BCPL, the language and its compiler, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1979.
  2. ↑ Upton, Eben (2006). Compiling with data dependence graphs (DPhil thesis). University of Cambridge.
  3. ↑ Bennett, Jeremy Peter (1987). A methodology for automated design of computer instruction sets (DPhil thesis). University of Cambridge.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Martin Richards at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. ↑ Richards, M. (1971). "The portability of the BCPL compiler". Software: Practice and Experience 1 (2): 135–146. doi:10.1002/spe.4380010204.
  6. ↑ Richards, Martin (1967). The design and implementation of CPL-like programming languages (DPhil thesis). University of Cambridge.
  7. ↑ Martin Richards's publications indexed by the DBLP Bibliography Server at the University of Trier
  8. ↑ Richards, M.; Aylward, A. R.; Bond, P.; Evans, R. D.; Knight, B. J. (1979). "TRIPOS—a portable operating system for mini-computers". Software: Practice and Experience 9 (7): 513. doi:10.1002/spe.4380090702.
  9. ↑ "Martin Richards". IEEE Computer Society. Retrieved 12 April 2015.