Roland Carl Backhouse

Roland Carl Backhouse (born 18 August 1948) is a British computer scientist and mathematician. As of 2020^[update], he is Emeritus Professor of Computing Science at the University of Nottingham.^[1][2]

Roland Carl Backhouse
Roland Backhouse, 2009
Born	(1948-08-18) 18 August 1948 (age 76) Middlesbrough, England
Citizenship	Great Britain Netherlands
Education	Churchill College, Cambridge Imperial College London
Known for	Program construction Algorithmic problem solving ALGOL
Spouse	Hilary
Children	3
Scientific career
Fields	Computer science, mathematics
Institutions	Royal Aircraft Establishment Heriot-Watt University University of Essex University of Groningen Eindhoven University of Technology University of Nottingham
Doctoral advisor	Jim Cunningham
Website	www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~psarb2

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 (Ph.D.) was completed under the supervision of Jim Cunningham at Imperial College London.

Career

Backhouse's career has included Royal Aircraft Establishment (1969–1970), Heriot-Watt University (1973–1982), University of Essex (1982–1986). He was formerly Professor of Computer Science at the University of Groningen (1986–1990) and Eindhoven University of Technology (1990–1999) in the Netherlands, before his position at the University of Nottingham.

He was a member of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) IFIP Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi,^[3] which specified, maintains, and supports the programming languages ALGOL 60 and ALGOL 68.^[4]

Personal life

Backhouse is married to Hilary, née Mitchell. 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 (1953—1994), he began the biennial series of conferences on the Mathematics of Program Construction, the first of which was held in 1989.