Philip Wadler's home page

Contact details

Blog

Links

Haskell

JFP

FP in the real world

SPLS

Computational Thinking

IPAB Squash Ladder

Philip Wadler

Visiting CWI Amsterdam

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Currently:

Professor of Theoretical Computer Science, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh (2003-).

Formerly:

Avaya Labs, Basking Ridge, Researcher (2000-2003).
Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, Researcher (1996-2000).
Glasgow University, Professor (1993-1996), Reader (1990-1993), Lecturer (1987-1990).
University of Sydney, Guest professor (Jan-Feb 1991).
University of Copenhagen, Guest professor (Aug 1989).
Oxford University, Postdoc (1983-1987)
Chalmers Tekniska Högskola, Göteborg, Visiting Fellow (Sep 1986-Feb 1987).
Carnegie-Mellon University, Graduate student (1977-1982)
Stanford University, Undergraduate (1973-1977)

For details see my vita or short biography.

Research interests

Links. My latest research interest is Links, a programming language for web application development, building on my experience with XML, Java, and Haskell.
XML. I represented Avaya on the W3C XML Query working group, which designed XQuery a query language for XML. My work on XQuery was done in close collaboration with Jerome Simeon and Mary Fernandez, who have an implementation of XQuery called Galax. I ran a workshop on XML and Data Binding. I formerly served on the W3C XSL working group, and I wrote a simple formal model for pattern matching in XSLT.
Java. With Gilad Bracha, Martin Odersky, and David Stoutamire, I designed GJ, an extension of Java that incorporates generic types. With Benjamin Pierce and Atsushi Igarashi, I designed Featherweight Java, a small formal model of Java, comparable in simplicity to lambda calculus.
Functional languages. I was a principal designer of Haskell. With Simon Marlow, I developed a type tool for Erlang. I am a founding member of IFIP WG 2.8 Functional Programming, and served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Functional Programming.
Logic and programming. See 19'th Century Logic and 21'st Century Programming Languages, which appeared in Dr Dobbs, and slides from two talks As natural as 0,1,2... and The unreasonable effectiveness of logic (my inaugural lecture).

Award

Most Influential POPL Paper Award 2003 (for 1993): Imperative functional programming, by Simon Peyton Jones and Philip Wadler.

Presented annually to the author(s) of a paper presented at the POPL held 10 years prior to the award year. The award includes a prize of $1,000 to be split among the authors of the winning paper. The papers are judged by their influence over the past decade.

Upcoming

ICFP 2009, local arrangments chair.

Recent talks and papers

Idioms are oblivious, arrows are meticulous, monads are promiscuous, MSFP 2008.
The arrow calculus (Functional pearl), Submitted to ICFP 2008.
Well-typed programs can't be blamed, Submitted to ICFP 2008.
An idiom's guide to formlets, Submitted to ICFP 2008.
Signed and sealed, Submitted to ICFP 2008.
A located lambda calculus, Submitted to ICFP 2008.
Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD 2008), 2-4 April 2008, Brussels (keynote). Presented Well-typed programs can't be blamed.
Well-typed programs can't be blamed, Scheme workshop, ICFP, Freiburg, 30 September 2007.
Comprehensive comprehensions, Haskell workshop, ICFP, Freiburg, 30 September 2007.
Links: Web Programming Without Tiers, invited talk, FMCO, Amsterdam, 9 November 2006, NICTA, Melbourne, 2 February 2006, and PADL, Charleston, 9 January 2006.
Faith, Evolution, and Programming Languages, invited talk, OOPSLA, Portland, 26 October 2006.
You and Your Research, my attempt to channel R. W. Hamming in a talk for postgraduate students at Firbush retreat. Here is a transcript of Hamming's original talk.
Call-by-value is dual to call-by-name, Reloaded Invited talk, Rewriting Techniques and Applications (RTA), Nara, April 2005.
The unreasonable effectiveness of logic, inaugural lecture, University of Edinburgh, 16 November 2004.
Down with the bureaucracy of syntax! Pattern matching for classical linear logic, manuscript, April 2004.
The Girard-Reynolds Isomorphism (second edition), manuscript, March 2004.
XQuery from the Experts, published by Addison-Wesley, 29 August 2003 (contributor).
Call-by-value is dual to call-by-name, ICFP, Uppsala, Sweden, 25-29 August 2003.
Preliminary version: NJPLS, AT&T Labs, Florham Park, 21 February 2003.
A Prettier Printer, In The Fun of Programming, A symposium in honour of Professor Richard Bird's 60th birthday, Examination Schools, Oxford, 24-25 March 2003.
As Natural as 0, 1, 2, Edinburgh University Informatics Jamboree 20 May 2004, Bard College Distinguished Scientist Lecture, 10 April 2003, and
University of Utah Evans and Sutherland Distinguished Lecture, 20 November 2002.
The Essence of XML, POPL 2003, New Orleans, January 2003.
Preliminary version: FLOPS 2002, Aizu, Japan, September 2002 (invited talk).
The Great Type Hope. Erlang Workshop, Pittsburgh, October 2002 (invited talk).
XQuery, a typed functional language for querying XML, Advanced Functional Programming, Oxford, August 2002.
XQuery tutorial, XML 2001, Orlando, December 2001 (tutorial).
Et tu, XML? The fall of the relational empire, VLDB 2001, Rome, September 2001 (keynote).
MSL: A model for W3C XML Schema, WWW01, Hong Kong, May 2001.
From Frege to Gosling, Alan J. Perlis Symposium, Programming Languages: Theory Meets the Real World, Yale University, 27 April 2000 (invited talk).
19'th Century Logic and 21'st Century Programming Languages, Dr Dobbs, December 2000.

Publications

Here are citations to my work from the Citeseer. I appear at position 73 in Citeseer's list of most cited authors (August 2006), and position 6 in a list of most acknowledged researchers

Students

Current students:

Ezra Cooper (PhD) (blog)
DeLesley Hutchins (PhD) (blog)
Ben Kavanagh (PhD) (blog, wiki)
Iain Parris (MSc) Mandelbrot Maps
Jeremy Yallop (PhD) (blog)

Previous students:

Laura Korte (PhD) (blog)
Gilles Dubochet (MSc) (blog)
Ross Butler (Honours) (blog)
James McCreary (Honours) (blog)
James Rutherford (Honours) (blog)
Dave Yeo (Honours) (blog, new honeypot, old honeypot)
Neil Campbell (Honours) (blog)
Calum Leslie (Honours) (blog)

Look here if you are interested in postgraduate study at Edinburgh.

Teaching

Informatics 1, Functional Programming (check out our programming competition)
Types and Programming Languages

Recent and upcoming events

OOPSLA, Portland, 22-6 October 2006 (invited speaker).
FMCO, Amsterdam, 7-10 November 2006 (keynote).
Programming Paradigms for the Web, Dagstuhl, 28 January-2 Feb 2007 (co-organiser).
Intel Berkeley Programming Languages Seminar, Mon 30 April 2007.
History of Programming Languages, San Diego, California, 9-10 June 2007 (paper).
Principles of Programming Languages, 10-12 January 2008 (program chair).
European Symposium on Programming Languages, 29 March-6 April 2008, Budapest (program committee).
Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD 2008), 2-4 April 2008, Brussels (keynote).

Here are some past events.

Jewish calendar

A request: please avoid scheduling events on Shabbat, Rosh Hasanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Chanukkah, Purim, and Passover. Summary of Jewish holidays, holiday dates for the next five years, 2007, 2008, 5767-5768, 5768-5769.

Service and Editorial

Journal of Functional Programming (JFP) (member of editorial board, former editor-in-chief).
Logical Methods in Computer Science (LMCS) (member of editorial board).
Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (member of editorial board).
SIGPLAN Notices (editor, functional programming column).
Functional Programming in the Real World (list maintainer).
ACM Special Interest Group in Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) (former member of executive board).

Please submit to the above!

Unusual applications

Here are some unusual application of my work. Please let me know of others!

Computational linguistics. Ken Shan in Linguistic side effects cites my work on monads.
Quantum computation.
- Andre van Tonder in A Lambda Calculus for Quantum Computation and Quantum Computation, Categorical Semantics and Linear Logic, cites my work on linear logic.
- Structuring quantum effects: superoperators as arrows, by Juliana Vizzotto, Thorsten Altenkirch, and Amr Sabry, relates quantum computing to monads and arrows.
- A linear-non-linear model for a computational call-by-value lambda calculus, by Peter Selinger and Benoit Valiron, relates quantum computing to both linear logic and monads.
eScience. Bertram Ludascher and Ilkay Altinas in On providing declarative design and programming constructs for scientific workflows based on process networks use Haskell to model workflow on a grid for eScience applications.

Other

Three ways to improve your writing. Also see Tips for Formal Writing from my colleague Jim Bednar.
James Harland lists reasons to never say never.
John Baez argues academics should not provide free work for Elsevier or other high-priced journals.
UKCRC's evidence to Parliament regarding electronic voter registration contains useful general information on building dependable systems.
The TIOBE Programming Community Index tracks popularity of programming languages. "The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings." Lisp, Scheme, and ML rate mentions. Erlang and Haskell are tracked, but no ratings are reported since they are not in the top 50.
Comments on the American election and www.sorryeverbody.com.
Science Commons encourages scientific innovation by working within current copyright and patent law to promote legal and technical mechanisms that remove barriers to sharing.
Oscar Nierstrasz advises on organizing a program committe in Identify the Champion. The paper is over-heavy in the jargon of design patterns, but the more experience I have with the ABCD ranking, the more I like it.
Some of my colleagues at other universities do not work under the best of conditions. Lecturer quits to become plumber.
Engineers applauded theoretical computer science when they found out What really happened on Mars?
Dave Clark advises on How to complete a PhD.
Paul Graham opines on how a programming language can grow in Being Popular.
Malevole asks whether I am a Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?
NewsScan provides an excellent daily summary of news relevant to the computing community.
Want to do Nobel-class research? It's not just a matter of luck. Richard Hamming lays out the nuts and bolts of how to do so in You and Your Research.
Peter Buneman presented me with a T-shirt summarizing The Evolution of Language.
And here is Fritz Ruehr's Evolution of a Haskell Programmer
The best conference talk I ever heard was Guy Steele on Growing a Language at OOPSLA 98. (Here is the original.)
Mark Jones initiated and Graham Hutton maintains an excellent Functional Programming FAQ.
Jon Hill maintains a Functional Programming Archive.
Joe Armstrong offers words of advice based on his experience with Erlang.
Don Smith penned a Haskell Lover's Plea.
John Peterson concocted a story about Haskell at Microsoft.
Here's a picture of Haskell's House.
David Touretzky's Gallery of CSS Descramblers includes an application of the Curry-Howard isomorphism to circumvent copyright law.
I wrote a guide to functional programming on the web
A micro version of my home page is engineered for search engines.