Christopher Strachey

Christopher Strachey ( born November 16, 1916 in Hampstead, England, † May 18, 1975 in Oxford, England ) was a British computer scientist. He was one of the founders of denotational semantics, and a pioneer in programming language design. The Strachey family members famous in politics, the arts, administration and academia.

Life

Christopher Strachey was born on 16 November 1916 as a son of Oliver Strachey and Rachel ( Ray ) Costelloe in Hampstead, England. Oliver Strachey was the son of Richard Strachey and grandson of Sir Henry Strachey, 1st Baronet. In 1919 the family moved to Gordon Square. The Strachey belonged to the Bloomsbury Group, which included Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes and Lytton Strachey Christopher's uncle belonged. At age 13, Christopher joined the Gresham 's School in Holt, where he noticed by intelligent services, but in general was a mediocre student. In 1935 he was admitted to King's College at the University of Cambridge, where he continued his studies but neglected. Strachey initially studied mathematics and then switched to physics. Towards the end of his third year at Cambridge Strachey suffered a nervous breakdown, which possibly related to the fact that he had to deal with his homosexuality. He returned to Cambridge, but only managed a mediocre degree in natural sciences.

Since it was not possible for him to continue his education, Christopher took a job as a physicist at the company Standard Telephone & Cables Ltd (STC ). His first assignment was to develop a mathematical analysis to the design of electron tubes for use in radar. The complexity of the calculations required the use of a differential analyzer. This first experience with an abacus woke Strachey's interest and he began to do research about this. An application for a research position at Cambridge was rejected and Strachey continued to work throughout the Second World War for STC. After the war, fulfilled a long -cherished wish for him: He was a teacher at St Edmund 's School in Canterbury, where he taught mathematics and physics. Three years later, in 1949, he could switch to the more prestigious Harrow School, where he stayed for three years.

In January 1951, a friend introduced him to Mike Woodger the National Physical Laboratory ( NPL). The laboratory had built a reduced version of Turing's Automatic Computing Engine (ACE ) is successful, the pilot ACE, and drawn up in the year 1945. In his spare time Strachey developed a program for the lady game that he completed in February 1951. The game spent the entire main memory of Pilot ACE and ran for the first time on 30 July 1951 at NPL. As Strachey heard from the Manchester Mark 1, which had a much larger main memory, he asked his former fellow student Alan Turing to the manual and wrote the program in October 1951, new in the machine language of the computer. He also wrote one of the first computer music programs; it played a children's song ( Baa Baa Black Sheep. )

Strachey worked from 1952 to 1959 for the National Research Development Corporation ( NRDC ). During his work on the St. Lawrence Seaway, he was able to visit several centers in the United States and catalog their instruction sets. Later he wrote programs for the Elliott 401 and the Ferranti Pegasus. He also worked on the analysis of vibration in aircraft and worked there briefly with Roger Penrose together. Even the concept of time sharing he developed.

In 1959 Strachey left the NRDC and became a freelance consultant. He worked for the National Resources Defense Council, EMI, Ferranti and other organizations on a diversified number of projects. This included logic design for computer and later the design of high level languages ​​. Under a contract to manufacture a car code for the Ferranti Orion, hired Strachey Peter Landin, who remained his sole assistant for the duration of his consulting activities.

In 1962 he accepted a position at Cambridge University, but remained also a freelance consultant. In 1965, he then took a job at Oxford University as the first director of the Programming Research Group. There he worked with Dana Scott.

Work

Strachey designed the Combined Programming Language (CPL ) and was the first to make the distinction between L- value and R- value of variables in programming. He also coined the term currying; the concept behind it goes back to Haskell Brooks Curry.

He played a crucial role in the development of the Ferranti Pegasus computer.

The macro programming language m4 (programming language) draws its concepts from the GPM, who in his work " A General Purpose Macro generator ", Computer Journal 8,3 ( 1965), pp. 225-241, has been described. GPM is one of the oldest macro processors.