Robert Kowalski | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1941-05-15)15 May 1941 (age 83) Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago University of Bridgeport (BA) Stanford University (MSc) University of Warsaw University of Edinburgh (PhD) |
| Known for | Logic programming Prolog Horn clause Event calculus |
| Awards | IJCAI Award for Research Excellence (2011) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Logic Computer science |
| Institutions | University of Edinburgh Imperial College London |
| Thesis | Studies in the Completeness and Efficiency of Theorem-Proving by Resolution (1970) |
| Doctoral advisor | Bernard Meltzer |
| Doctoral students | |
Robert Anthony Kowalski (born 15 May 1941) is an American-Britishlogician andcomputer scientist, whose research is concerned with developing both human-oriented models of computing and computational models of human thinking.[1] He has spent most of his career in theUnited Kingdom.
He was educated at theUniversity of Chicago,University of Bridgeport (BA in mathematics, 1963),Stanford University (MSc in mathematics, 1966),University of Warsaw and theUniversity of Edinburgh (PhD incomputer science, 1970).[1]
He was aresearch fellow at theUniversity of Edinburgh (1970–75) and has been at theDepartment of Computing, Imperial College London since 1975, attaining a chair inComputational logic in 1982 and becoming Emeritus Professor in 1999.[1]
He began his research in the field ofautomated theorem proving, developing bothSL-resolution[2] with Donald Kuehner and the connection graph proof procedure.[3] He developedSLD resolution and the procedural interpretation ofHorn clauses,[4] which underpin the operational semantics ofbackward reasoning inlogic programming. WithMaarten van Emden,[5] he also developed the minimal model and the fixpoint semantics of Horn clauses, which underpin the logical semantics of logic programming.
With Marek Sergot, he developed both theevent calculus[6] and the application of logic programming tolegal reasoning.[7][8] Together, Kowalski and Sergot supervised one of the first use cases of alegal expert system.[9] With Fariba Sadri, he developed an agent model[10][11] in which beliefs are represented by logic programs and goals are represented byintegrity constraints.
Kowalski was one of the developers ofabductive logic programming, in which logic programs are augmented with integrity constraints and with undefined, abducible predicates.[12][13] This work led to the demonstration with Phan Minh Dung andFrancesca Toni that most logics for default reasoning can be regarded as special cases of assumption-basedargumentation.[14][15]
In his 1979 book,Logic for Problem Solving,[16] Kowalski argues that logical inference provides a simple and powerful model of problem solving that can be used by both humans and computers. In his 2011 book,Computational Logic and Human Thinking - How to be Artificially Intelligent,[17] he argues that the use ofcomputational logic can help ordinary people to improve their natural language communication skills, and that in combination withdecision theory, it can be used to improve their practical problem-solving abilities.
In joint work with Fariba Sadri, he has developed the logic and computer language Logic Production Systems (LPS),[18] which integrates much of his previous work on computational logic. He has continued his interest in the development ofartificial intelligence.[19]
Kowalski was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Association for Artificial Intelligence in 1991, of the European Co-ordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence in 1999, and theAssociation for Computing Machinery in 2001.[1] In 2011, he received theIJCAI Award for Research Excellence, "for his contributions to logic forknowledge representation and problem solving, including his pioneering work on automated theorem proving and logic programming".[20] In 2012, he received theJapan Society for the Promotion of Science Award for Eminent Scientists for 2012–2014.[21] In 2021, he received the Inaugural CodeX Prize for his work with Fariba Sadri and Marek Sergot "in acknowledgment of their work on the application of logic programming to the formalization and analysis of theBritish Nationality Act. The authors' seminal article, "The British Nationality Act as a Logic Program," published in 1986 in theCommunications of the ACM journal, is one of the first and best-known works in computational law, and one of the most widely cited papers in the field."[22]
