Corrado Böhm

Corrado Böhm
Born	(1923-01-17)17 January 1923 Milan
Died	23 October 2017(2017-10-23) (aged 94) Rome
Nationality	Italian
Alma mater	ETH Zürich
Scientific career
Fields	Computer science
Institutions	University of Rome "La Sapienza"
Doctoral advisor	Eduard Stiefel Paul Bernays
Doctoral students	Giorgio Ausiello Mariangiola Dezani-Ciancaglini

Corrado Böhm (17 January 1923 – 23 October 2017) was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and 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.

Work

In his PhD dissertation (in Mathematics, at ETH Zurich, 1951; published in 1954), Böhm 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.

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. PDF at ETH Zürich English translation 2016 by Peter Sestoft
• 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 β-η-normali nel λ-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.

See also

• P′′, a minimal computer programming language
• Structured program theorem
• List of pioneers in computer science
• Böhm tree

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 Böhm's personal page.