Mar 15 2009

Curry with your curry and beer?

Published by Dougal at 3:03 pm under Blogging, Life, Maths & Computer Science, Science

This is a wee announcement for anyone who wasn’t paying attention earlier. Philip Wadler will be the speaker at this week’s Café Scientifique, so I highly recommend you go.

Those details in full:

  • Title: “Proofs are Programs: 19th Century Logic and 21st Century Computing”
  • Date: Monday 16th March
  • Time: 8.30pm
  • Place: Filmhouse cafe bar, Lothian Road

As the 19th century drew to a close, logicians formalized an ideal notion of proof. They were driven by nothing other than an abiding interest in truth, and their proofs were as ethereal as the mind of God. Yet within decades these mathematical abstractions were realized by the hand of man, in the digital stored-program computer. How it came to be recognized that proofs and programs are the same is a story that spans a century, a chase with as many twists and turns as a thriller. At the end of the story is a principle for designing programming languages that will guide computers into the 21st century.

On a related note, one of the Cafe Sci organisers has started a new blog, so go and visit to say hello. Welcome to blogging Ed!

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