The Milner Lecture

Before he left Edinburgh for Cambridge, Robin Milner very kindly donated a sum of money to fund an annual lecture in Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, to be given

... by someone from outside the University who has done or is doing excellent and original theoretical work which has a perceived significance for practical computing. The spirit of the proposal is to keep a live connection between theory and application in computer science.

The Milner Lecture takes place in the Summer term, and is a public lecture, open to all. The speaker visits for several days and usually gives one or more other technical talks. In recent years these have been coordinated with the Informatics Jamboree.

Robin Milner was one of the founding members and the first director of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science. Robin Milner recently passed away. Obituaries appeared in The Independent, The Guardian, and The Scotsman, among others.

2010 Lecture

Professor Stephen A. Cook, Department of Computer Science University of Toronto: Logic and Computational Complexity: A Personal Perspective

Past lecturers

2009

Professor Moshe Vardi, Rice University And Logic Begat Computer Science: When Giants Roamed the Earth.

2008

Professor Rajeev Alur, University of Pennsylvania: Software Model Checking.

2007

Ronald Fagin, IBM (Almaden): Finite Model Theory - How It All Began.

2006

Shafi Goldwasser, MIT: On the Impossibility of Obfuscation.

2005

Gérard Huet, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (INRIA): Design of a computational linguistics platform.

2004

Mihalis Yannakakis, Columbia University: Testing, Optimization, and Games.

2003

Frank Kelly, Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge: Fairness of Internet Protocols.

2002

Martín Abadi, University of California, Santa Cruz: Security Protocols: Principles and Calculi. (Streaming video: QuickTime, Windows Media.)

2001

Christos Papadimitriou, Berkeley: Algorithmic Problems Related to the Internet. (Streaming video: rm.)

2000

Joseph Halpern, Cornell University: Knowledge and Common Knowledge in Multi-Agent Systems. (Streaming video: rm.)

1999

Butler Lampson, Microsoft Research: Computer Security in the Real World.

1998

Amir Pnueli, Weizmann Institute: Temporal Logic for Verification of Reactive Systems.

1997

Les Valiant, Harvard University: Cognitive Computation.

1996

Gerard Berry, Ecole des Mines and INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis: Synchronous Programming of Reactive Systems.

Nominations for future lecturers

The Director of LFCS makes the selection of each year's Milner Lecturer, following a periodic call for nominations. To make a nomination, contact David Aspinall. Please include a brief case for support, explaining why your nominee fits the description quoted above, mentioning the nature of their theoretical work and its significance for practical computing. Nominations are carried over from one year to the next.