Corrado Böhm


Corrado Böhm was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" and a computer scientist known especially for his contributions to the theory of structured programming, constructive mathematics, combinatory logic, lambda calculus, and the semantics and implementation of functional programming languages.

Work

In his PhD dissertation, Böhm describes for the first time a full meta-circular compiler, that is a translation mechanism of a programming language, written in that same language. His most influential contribution is the so-called structured program theorem, published in 1966 together with Giuseppe Jacopini. In lambda calculus, he established an important separation theorem between normal forms. Together with Alessandro Berarducci, he demonstrated an isomorphism between the strictly-positive algebraic data types and the polymorphic lambda-terms, otherwise known as Böhm–Berarducci encoding.
A special issue of Theoretical Computer Science was dedicated to him in 1993, on his 70th birthday. He is the recipient of the 2001 EATCS Award for a distinguished career in theoretical computer science.

Selected publications