Roland Carl Backhouse


Roland Carl Backhouse is a British computer scientist and mathematician., he is Emeritus Professor of Computing Science at the University of Nottingham.

Early life and education

Backhouse was born and raised in the Thorntree district of Middlesbrough, an industrial town in the north-east of England. In 1959, he won a place at the then all-male Acklam Hall Grammar School before going on to Churchill College, Cambridge, in 1966. His doctorate was completed under the supervision of Jim Cunningham at Imperial College London.

Career

Backhouse's career has included Royal Aircraft Establishment, Heriot-Watt University, University of Essex. He was formerly Professor of Computer Science at the University of Groningen and Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, before his position at the University of Nottingham.
He was a member of the International Federation for Information Processing IFIP Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi, which supports and maintains the programming languages ALGOL 60 and ALGOL 68.

Personal life

Backhouse is married to Hilary and they have three sons, Kevin, Andrew, and David.

Academic interests

His research interests lie in the mathematics of program construction and algorithmic problem solving. Together with Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut, he began the biennial series of conferences on the Mathematics of Program Construction, the first of which was held in 1989.

Publications

Books

Books edited

Selected papers