Christopher Strachey (1916–1975) was a British computer scientist. 1916 is a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January-February January 1 -The first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled. ... 1975 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ... Computer science (informally: CS or compsci) is, in its most general sense, the study of computation and information processing, both in hardware and in software. ...

Strachey was one of the founders of denotational semantics, and a pioneer in programming language design. He worked at the Manchester Computing Machine Laboratory while teaching at Harrow School and in 1952, after encouragement from Alan Turing, wrote a program that could "play a complete game of draughts at a reasonable speed". He collaborated with Dana Scott and Peter Landin in the 1960s and went on to work in Cambridge and Oxford universities, becoming the director of the Programming Research Group at the latter. In computer science, denotational semantics is one of the approaches to formalize the semantics of computer programs. ... A programming language or computer language is a standardized communication technique for expressing instructions to a computer. ... Harrow School Crest Harrow School is a British public school, located in Harrow on the Hill, in North West London. ... 1952 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Alan Turing is often considered the father of modern computer science. ... starting position on a 10×10 draughts board Draughts, also known as checkers, is a group of mental sport board games between two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over the enemys pieces. ... This article needs cleanup. ... Peter Landin is a British computer scientist. ... The 1960s, or The Sexy Sixties, in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. ... The city of Cambridge is an old English university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire. ... Oxford is a city and local government district in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 134,248 (2001 census). ... A professor giving a lecture at the Helsinki University of Technology A university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees. ... The Programming Research Group is based at Oxford Universitys Computing Laboratory. ...

He developed the Combined Programming Language (CPL) and, as seen in the C programming language, the distinction between L- and R-values. While he did not invent the function, Strachey coined the term Currying. The Combined Programming Language (CPL) was a computer programming language developed jointly between the Mathematical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and the University of London Computer Unit during the 1960s. ... The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the original edition that served for many years as an informal specification of the language The C programming language is a standardized imperative computer programming language developed in the early 1970s by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie for use on the... It has been suggested that value (programming) be merged into this article or section. ... In computer science, currying is the technique of transforming a function taking multiple arguments into a function that takes a single argument (the first of the arguments to the original function) and returns a new function that takes the remainder of the arguments and returns the result. ...

He was instrumental in the design of the Ferranti PEGASUS computer. An interesting quote in that regard is "Optimum programming is to be avoided because it tends to become a time-wasting intellectual hobby of the programmers" (slightly paraphrased). Ferranti or Ferranti International Signal plc by the time of its collapse, was a major UK electrical engineering and equipment firm, known primarily for their defense electronics and power grid systems. ... PEGASUS was an early thermionic valve (vacuum tube) computer built by Ferranti, Ltd of Great Britain. ... In the history of computing, optimum programming is the practice of arranging a programs instructions in memory so as to minimize the the time the machine spends waiting for instructions. ...

References

• Copeland, B.J. (June 2000). "A Brief History of Computing" at AlanTuring.net
• Campbell-Kelly, M. Christopher Strachey, 1916–1975 – A Biographical Note, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol.7, No.1, pp.19–42, 1985.

This article is about the year 2000. ... The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (pronounced as eye-triple-ee) is an international non-profit, professional organization incorporated in the State of New York, United States. ...

External links

• Christopher Strachey (1916–1975) at the Virtual Museum of Computing