For anyone that uses an ML (e.g. OCaml), Haskell or Scala, Milner was responsible for the Hindley-Milner type system and inference algorithm that sits at the foundation of these languages.
It ignited a wave of research into type theory that continues to this day, yet in many ways, Hindley-Milner is still the most significant contribution to the field.
I remember reading his original paper on polymorphic typing for my qualifiers and being struck by the elegance and approachability of his writing.
Any chance you could post some info about the paper? I've been itching to learn more about how type inferencing (especially polymorphic type inferencing) works.
It's almost impossible to over-state his contributions to computer science, particularly within programming languages, theorem proving and concurrency theory. I never met him, but I have followed and admired his work for some time, and this is a real loss to the community.
Is it so that CS-books face an increase in value when the author have a passed away? Kinda like with art, where the author/artist never sees the pleasure of economical benefits during his/hers lifespan. But when death occurs -- that will be the ultimate marketing effort as we can take the time and sum up a person intellectual contributions....hmm..does this wanna make you work harder or what?
Robin Milner was indeed one of a kind. One of the Great Masters of Computing, for sure. I'm currently taking a class on models for Concurrent Computing, and the first subject is Milner's CCS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_communicating_syste...
The way he thinks about processes, communication and synchronization is just beautiful. When I was able to "prove" that the implementation of a two-bit buffer as a chain of two one-bit buffers actually behaves as specified, it was as enlightening as when I first saw a higher order function in Scheme.
It ignited a wave of research into type theory that continues to this day, yet in many ways, Hindley-Milner is still the most significant contribution to the field.
I remember reading his original paper on polymorphic typing for my qualifiers and being struck by the elegance and approachability of his writing.
Well worth a read.