Martin Richards (computer scientist)

British computer scientist (born 1940)

Martin Richards

Born|  (1940-07-21) 21 July 1940 (age 85)[2]
Alma mater| University of Cambridge
Known for| Basic Combined Programming Language
Awards| IEEE Computer Pioneer Award (2003)
Scientific career
Fields| Programming languages
Institutions| University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
Thesis|  The design and implementation of CPL-like programming languages  (1967)
Doctoral advisor| David Barron, David Park and Christopher Strachey
Doctoral students| Eben Upton[1]
Martin Vechev
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[3] 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

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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][5] He was a senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory until his retirement in 2007.

## Research

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In addition to BCPL, Richards' work[6] includes the development of the TRIPOS[7] 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".[8]

Richards is a fellow of St John's College at the University of Cambridge.

## References

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1. ^ Upton, Eben (2006). Compiling with data dependence graphs (DPhil thesis). University of Cambridge.
2. ^ Cf. British Library catalogue entry for BCPL, the language and its compiler, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1979.
3. ^ Richards, M. (1971). "The portability of the BCPL compiler". Software: Practice and Experience. 1 (2): 135–146\. doi:10.1002/spe.4380010204.
4. ^ Martin Richards at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
5. ^ Richards, Martin (1967). The design and implementation of CPL-like programming languages (DPhil thesis). University of Cambridge.
6. ^ Martin Richards at DBLP Bibliography Server
7. ^ 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.
8. ^ "Martin Richards". IEEE Computer Society. Retrieved 12 April 2015.

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