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Alain Colmerauer

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Alain Colmerauer
Born(1941-01-24)24 January 1941
Carcassonne, France
Died12 May 2017(2017-05-12) (aged 76)
Marseille, France
Known forProlog
SpouseColette Coursaget
Children3
Scientific career
Thesis Precedences, analyse syntaxique et langages de programmation  (1967)
Doctoral advisorLouis Bolliet, Jean Kuntzman

Alain Colmerauer (24 January 1941 – 12 May 2017) was a French computer scientist. He was a professor at Aix-Marseille University, and the creator of the logic programming language Prolog.

Early life

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Alain Colmerauer was born on 24 January 1941 in Carcassonne.[1] He graduated from the Grenoble Institute of Technology,[2] and he earned a PhD from the Ensimag in Grenoble.[3]

Career

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Colmerauer spent 1967–1970 as assistant professor at the University of Montreal,[3] where he created Q-Systems, one of the earliest linguistic formalisms used in the development of the TAUM-METEO machine translation prototype.[2] Developing Prolog III in 1984, he was one of the main founders of the field of constraint logic programming.[2]

Colmerauer became an associate professor at Aix-Marseille University in Luminy in 1970. He was promoted to full professor in 1979. From 1993 to 1995, he was head of the Laboratoire d'Informatique de Marseille (LIM), a joint laboratory of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Université de Provence and the Université de la Méditerranée.[3] Despite retiring as emeritus professor in 2006,[3] he remained a member of the artificial intelligence taskforce in Luminy.[4]

Colmerauer won an award from the regional council of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, and in 1985 the Michel Monpetit Award, from the French Academy of Sciences.[5] In 1986, he was made a knight of the Legion of Honour by the French government.[3] He became Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in 1991,[6] and in 1997 the Association for Logic Programming bestowed upon him and fourteen other select researchers the title of Founder of Logic Programming.[7] He then received the Association for Constraint Programming's Research Excellence Award in 2008.[8] He was also a correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences in the area of mathematics.[9]

Death

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Colmerauer died on 12 May 2017.[3][10][11][12]

The ALP Alain Colmerauer Prize

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The ALP Alain Colmerauer Prize (in short: Alain Colmerauer Prize)[13] is organized by the Association for Logic Programming (ALP). The Prize is given for recent accomplishments and practical advances in Prolog-inspired computing, understood in a broad sense, where foundational, technological, and practical contributions are eligible with proven evidence or potential for the future development of Logic Programming. The award of the inaugural edition of the Prize in 2022, in cooperation with the Prolog Heritage Association, was a highlight of the Year of Prolog celebrating 50 years of Prolog and logic programming.

References

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  1. ^ "Colmerauer, Alain (1941-....)". IdRef. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
  2. ^ a b c Cohen, Jacques (November 2001). "A Tribute to Alain Colmerauer". Theory and Practice of Logic Programming. 1 (6): 637–646. arXiv:cs/0402058. doi:10.1017/S1471068401001119. S2CID 7946933.
  3. ^ a b c d e f "In Memoriam: Alain Colmerauer". Association for Logic Programming. 15 May 2017. Archived from the original on 8 April 2023. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
  4. ^ Colmerauer, Alain. Retrieved 19 May 2017 – via Bibliothèque nationale de France.
  5. ^ "PRIX DE COMMISSIONS". La Vie des sciences. 1985. Retrieved 19 May 2017 – via Bibliothèque nationale de France.
  6. ^ "ELECTED AAAI FELLOWS". American Association of Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
  7. ^ "ALP Awards | Association for Logic Programming". 13 April 2013. Archived from the original on 13 April 2013. Retrieved 8 July 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  8. ^ "Research Excellence Award". Association for Constraint Programming. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
  9. ^ "Alain Colmerauer". Académie des sciences. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
  10. ^ Fisher, Lawrence M. "In Memoriam Alain Colmerauer: 1941–2017". Communications of the ACM. ACM. Retrieved 23 May 2017. — According to this obituary, Alain Colmerauer died on 15 May.
  11. ^ lemonde.fr (in French)
  12. ^ ensimag.grenoble-inp.fr (in French)
  13. ^ "The ALP Alain Colmerauer Prize". Association for Logic Programming. Retrieved 5 July 2024.
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