Robin Milner obituary
Computer scientist who was one of the world's foremost theorists in his field Robin Milner, who has died aged 76, was one of the world's foremost theorists of computer science. Over a period of 40 years, he made important contributions to the theoretical foundations of computing. In his latter years, as professor emeritus at Cambridge University, he played a leading role in establishing the Grand Challenges global research agenda for computer science. Milner and Tony Hoare, another noted theoretician, aimed to establish a set of long-term research goals of comparable vision to the Human Genome Project . Milner was personally involved in establishing the Grand Challenge for a "science for global ubiquitous computing". Within 20 years, he argued, computers could be regarded as one single global universal computer. There needed to be an underlying theory for how we could program and trust such a system. That challenge remains elusive, but vitally important. As Milner once remarked, our lack of scientific understanding about how today's computing infrastructure works "has all the charm of inventing the science of navigation while already on board ship". Milner was born in Yealmpton, near Plymouth, the younger child of John, an army officer, and his wife, Muriel. The family moved often, and Robin was educated as a boarder at a preparatory school. He was a brilliant student and in 1946 won a scholarship to Eton college, where he excelled in mathematics
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Robin Milner obituary
Obituary: Rajeev Motwani
Brilliant computer scientist who mentored the founders of Google The influence of the Stanford University computer scientist Rajeev Motwani, who has been found dead in the swimming pool of his California home, at the age of 47, stretched beyond Silicon Valley to affect the lives of millions of people around the world. Known among his peers as having a brilliant mind, Motwani was an award-winning professor whose work in data mining and algorithms scooped a string of accolades, including the prestigious Gödel prize (2001). But it was in his role as a mentor and adviser to some of the world's most powerful technology companies - including his pivotal part in the development of the internet search engine Google - that he made the greatest impact. He had a critical role in assisting the graduate research of the Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, encouraging the duo and helping them develop the systems that made them billionaires, so kickstarting what has probably become the pre-eminent company of the 21st century. Like many of America's pioneering technologists, Motwani was an immigrant, born in the Indian border city of Jammu to a military family. With his father in the army, the family moved regularly, but the young Rajeev was soon sent to the St Columba's boys' school in New Delhi. He showed an aptitude for numbers at an early age, and soon expressed a desire to become a mathematician, inspired partly by the family's collection of biographies of famous scientists, including his hero, the 19th-century German genius Carl Gauss. When the time came to consider university, however, Motwani's family encouraged him to study computer science, which was a sideways move that they saw as more stable and lucrative than pure mathematics. Despite his protestations, Motwani enrolled at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur and swiftly discovered that computer science was, after all, a highly mathematical discipline.
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Obituary: Rajeev Motwani
Humble mouse turns 40 and loses its touch
The name was never meant to stick. When Doug Engelbart and his team at the Stanford Research Institute in California designed a computer controller encased in a carved-out wooden block, with wheels mounted on the underbelly, one researcher nicknamed it a 'mouse'. 'We thought that when it had escaped out to the world it would have a more dignified name,' Engelbart recalled later
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Humble mouse turns 40 and loses its touch