Biography:Ib Holm Sørensen

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Ib Holm Sørensen
Photographic portrait
BornTemplate:Date of birth
Aabenraa, Denmark
DiedTemplate:Date of death and age
Fort-de-France, Martinique
Alma materWolfson College, Oxford
Known forformal methods, Z notation, B-Method, B-Tool[1]
AwardsQueen's Award for Technological Achievement (1992)[2][3]
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science; software engineering
InstitutionsAarhus University, University of Oxford, BP Research, B-Core (UK)
ThesisTopics in Programme Specification and Design: Specification and Design of Distributed Systems (1981)
Doctoral advisorTony Hoare
Websitecs.ox.ac.uk/people/ib.sorensen

Ib Holm Sørensen (29 January 1949 – 17 January 2012) was a Danish computer scientist who contributed to the early development and use of formal methods for specifying software systems and modules, especially around the Z notation and the B-Method. He worked in both academia and industry.[4][5]

Sørensen was born in Aabenraa, Denmark, and started his academic career in the 1970s at Aarhus University, where he worked on Rikke-Mathilda micro-assemblers and simulators on a DECSystem-10 computer.[6]

Career

In 1979, Sørensen joined the Programming Research Group (PRG), part of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory (now Oxford University's Department of Computer Science) in England, under the direction of Prof. Tony Hoare. There he worked with Jean-Raymond Abrial, Bernard Sufrin, and others in the early development of the formal specification language Z. He received a DPhil degree from Oxford University in 1981.[7] He taught early courses in Z notation at Oxford.[8]

Sørensen was the head of the Transaction Processing Project at Oxford from its inception in 1982 (later renamed the "CICS Project"[9]), in collaboration with IBM (UK) Laboratories.[10] The project formally specified parts of IBM's CICS transaction processing software using Z notation. This won a Queen's Award for technological achievement in 1992.[2][3] As part of the CICS project, he extended Edsger Dijkstra's Guarded Command Language by allowing the use of Z-schema notation as abstract commands.[11] These ideas were later formalized by Carroll Morgan in his refinement calculus.[11] Sørensen also co-authored the groundbreaking Specification Case Study book on the use of Z, first published in 1987 (second edition published in 1993).[12]

From the late 1980s, Sørensen was central to the development of the B-Method, one of the leading formal methods.[13] He left Oxford University to lead a team for BP Research[13][1] to develop the B-toolkit to provide tool support for the B-method. He then founded the company B-Core (UK) Limited (now defunct) to support the B-Toolkit,[4][1][14] which is a collection of programming tools designed to support the use of the B notation, and he helped to complete a number of B-related projects.

Later, Sørensen returned to Oxford University. From 1999, he worked on the B-based Booster models of requirements. He died in 2012 before he could retire.[4]

Selected publications

Ib Holm Sørensen co-authored the following:[15][16]

  • Ib Holm Sørensen, Eric Kressel (1975). A proposal for a multi-programming BCPL system on RIKKE-1 (in Danish). Denmark: Department of Mathematics. Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University.
  • Eric Kressel, Ib Holm Sørensen (1975). The first BCPL system on RIKKE-1. Denmark: Department of Mathematics. Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University.
  • Eric Kressel, Ib Holm Sørensen (1975). The Mathilda driver, a software tool for hardware testing (in Danish). Denmark: Department of Mathematics. Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University.
  • Ib Holm Sørensen, Eric Kressel (1977). DAIMI MD: RIKKE-MATHILDA microassemblers and simulators on the DECsystem 10. Vol. 28. Denmark: Department of Mathematics. Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University.
  • Ib Holm Sørensen (1978). DAIMI PB: System Modelling: a Methodology for Describing the Structure of Complex Software, Firmware and Hardware Systems Consisting of Independent Process Components. Vol. 87. Denmark: Department of Mathematics. Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University.
  • Jens Kristian Kjærgård, Ib Holm Sørensen (1980). DAIMI MD: BCPL on RIKKE (in Danish). Vol. 36. Denmark: Department of Mathematics. Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University.
  • Jens Kristian Kjærgård, Ib Holm Sørensen (1980). DAIMI MD: The RIKKE Editor (in Danish). Vol. 37. Denmark: Department of Mathematics. Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University.
  • Ib Holm Sørensen (1981). DAIMI PB: Specification and Design of Distributed Systems. Denmark: Aarhus University.
  • Ib Holm Sørensen (1981). Topics in program specification and design: specification and design of distributed systems. DPhil thesis. UK: Wolfson College, University of Oxford.
  • Bill Flinn, Ib Holm Sørensen (1985). CAVIAR: A Case Study in Specification. UK: Programming Research Group, Oxford University Computing Laboratory.
  • C. A. R. Hoare, I. J. Hayes, He Jifeng, C. C. Morgan, A. W. Roscoe, J. W. Sanders, I. H. Sørensen, J. M. Spivey, B. A. Sufrin (August 1987). "Laws of programming". Communications of the ACM. 30 (8): 672–686. doi:10.1145/27651.27653.
  • Steve King, Ib Holm Sørensen, J. C. P. Woodcock (1988). Z: Grammar and Concrete and Abstract Syntaxes (Version 2.0). UK: Programming Research Group, Oxford University Computing Laboratory.
  • J.-R. Abrial, M. K. O. Lee, D. S. Neilson, P. N. Scharbach, I. H. Sørensen (1991). "The B-method". In S. Prehn, H. Toetenel (ed.). VDM '91 Formal Software Development Methods. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 552. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 398–405. doi:10.1007/BFb0020001. ISBN 3-540-54868-8.
  • Bill Flynn, Roger Gimon, Steve King, Carroll Morgan, Ib Holm Sørensen, Bernard Surfrin (1993). Ian Hayes (ed.). Specification Case Studies . International Series in Computer Science (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-832544-2. (1st ed., 1987.)

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Crichton, Edward (29 March 2022). "BToolkit". GitHub.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 King, Steve (1993). "The Use of Z in the Restructure of IBM CICS". In Hayes, Ian (ed.). Specification Case Studies. International Series in Computer Science (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall. pp. 202–213. ISBN 978-0-13-832544-2.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Prof Jim Woodcock, FREng" . UK: University of York.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Roscoe, Bill (8 February 2012). "Ib Sorensen – In memoriam". Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, UK.
  5. ↑ Bowen, Jonathan (July 2022). "Ib Holm Sørensen: Ten Years After". FACS FACTS (BCS-FACS) (2022-2): 41–49. https://www.bcs.org/media/9401/facs-jul22.pdf. Retrieved 3 August 2022. 
  6. ↑ Sørensen, Ib Holm; Kresse, Eric (December 1977). RIKKE-MATHILDA microassemblers and simulators on the DECSystem-10 . Vol. DAIMI MD-28. Aarhus University, Denmark.
  7. ↑ Sørensen, Ib Holm (1981). Topics in program specification and design: specification and design of distributed systems (DPhil). UK: Wolfson College, University of Oxford.
  8. ↑ Woodcock, Jim; Davies, Jim (1996). "Acknowledgments". Using Z: Specification, Refinement, and Proof. International Series in Computer Science. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-948472-8.
  9. ↑ Fitzgerald, J. S. (October 2006). Perspectives on Formal Methods in the Last 25 years. Technical Report Series. Vol. CS-TR-983. UK: Newcastle University.
  10. ↑ Hayes, Ian (1993). "Preface to the first edition". Specification Case Studies. International Series in Computer Science (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-832544-2.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Hayes, Ian J.; King, Steve (2021). "11.9 Industry Influence on Research". In Jones, Cliff B.; Misra, Jayadev (eds.). Theories of Programming: The Life and Works of Tony Hoare. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 266–267. ISBN 978-1-4503-8728-6.
  12. ↑ Hayes, Ian, ed. (1993). Specification Case Studies . International Series in Computer Science (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-832544-2.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Bhattacharya, Sourav; Winter, Victor L., eds. (2012). "8. History of B". High Integrity Software. Springer. p. 40. ISBN 978-1461513919.
  14. ↑ Wordsworth, J. B. (1996). Software Engineering With B. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0201403565
  15. ↑ "Ib Holm Sorensen". Google Books.
  16. ↑ "Ib Holm Sorensen". WorldCat.



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