Biography:Jean-Raymond Abrial

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Jean-Raymond Abrial
Photograph of Jean-Raymond Abrial
J.-R. Abrial in 2012
Born(1938-11-06)6 November 1938
Versailles, France
Died26 May 2025(2025-05-26) (aged 86)
Marseille, France
Alma materÉcole Polytechnique
Known forZ notation, B-Method, Event-B
AwardsMember of the Academia Europaea (2006)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science, software engineering, formal methods
InstitutionsOxford University Computing Laboratory, ETH Zurich
PatronsTony Hoare

Jean-Raymond Abrial (6 November 1938 – 26 May 2025) was a French computer scientist and inventor of the Z and B formal methods.[1][2][3]

Life and career

Abrial was born on 6 November 1938.[4] He was a student at the École Polytechnique (class of 1958).[5][6]

Abrial's 1974 paper Data Semantics[7] laid the foundation for a formal approach to Data Models; although not adopted directly by practitioners, it directly influenced all subsequent models from the Entity-Relationship Model through to RDF.

J.-R. Abrial is the father of the Z notation (typically used for formal specification of software), during his time at the Programming Research Group under Prof. Tony Hoare within the Oxford University Computing Laboratory (now Oxford University Department of Computer Science), arriving in 1979 and sharing an office and collaborating with Cliff Jones.[8][9] He later initiated the B-Method, with better tool-based software development support for refinement from a high-level specification to an executable program, including the Rodin tool. These are two important formal methods approaches for software engineering. He is the author of The B-Book: Assigning Programs to Meanings.[10] For much of his career he was an independent consultant.[11] He was an invited professor at ETH Zurich from 2004 to 2009.[12] He developed the B approach further as Event-B.[13]

Abrial was elected to be a Member of the Academia Europaea in 2006.[11] As well as being a computer scientist, he was also an explorer in north Africa and elsewhere.[14] He died on 26 May 2025, at the age of 86.[15]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Jean-Raymond Abrial" (in en). https://dblp.org/pid/16/756. 
  2. ↑ Habrias, Henri; Bowen, Jonathan P. (July 2025). "In memory of Jean-Raymond Abrial (1938–2025)". FACS FACTS (BCS-FACS) 2025 (2): 6–10. ISSN 0950-1231. https://www.bcs.org/media/yd4ocehl/facs-jul25.pdf. 
  3. ↑ "Tributes to Jean-Raymond Abrial". FACS FACTS (BCS-FACS) 2026 (1): 15–89. January 2026. ISSN 0950-1231. https://www.bcs.org/media/veppnllv/facs-jan26.pdf#page=14.00. 
  4. ↑ Bowen, Jonathan P.; Liu, Zhiming; Zhang, Zili (2019-04-17). "The Impact of Alan Turing: Formal Methods and Beyond" (in en). Engineering Trustworthy Software Systems: 4th International School, SETSS 2018, Chongqing, China, April 7–12, 2018, Tutorial Lectures. Springer. p. 211. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-17601-3_5. ISBN 978-3-030-17601-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=aMiSDwAAQBAJ&dq=Jean-Raymond+Abrial,+1938&pg=PA211. 
  5. ↑ "Jean-Raymond Abrial". IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37671781700. 
  6. ↑ "ACONIT-PSTC: Jean-Raymond Abrial, une vie de recherche basée sur la notion informatique de donnée". France: EchoSciences Grenoble. https://www.echosciences-grenoble.fr/articles/aconit-pstc-jean-raymond-abrial-une-vie-de-recherche-basee-sur-la-notion-informatique-de-donnee. 
  7. ↑ Abrial, Jean-Raymond (1974). "Data Semantics". IFIP Working Conference Data Base Management. Cargèse, Corsica, France: IFIP. pp. 1–60. https://dblp.org/db/conf/ds/dbm74.html. 
  8. ↑ Jones, Cliff; Roscoe, Bill (2010). Insight, inspiration and collaboration. Oxford University Department of Computer Science. Bibcode: 2010rwch.book....1J. https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/2856/biography.pdf. Retrieved 28 September 2023. 
  9. ↑ Jifeng, He; Jones, Cliff; Roscoe, Bill; Stoy, Joe; Sufrin, Bernard; Bowen, Jonathan P. (July 2024). Denvir, Tim. ed. "Tony Hoare @ 90". FACS FACTS (Formal Aspects of Computing Science (FACS) Specialist Group) 2024 (2): 5–42. ISSN 0950-1231. https://www.bcs.org/media/1wrosrpv/facs-jul24.pdf. Retrieved 10 July 2024. 
  10. ↑ Jean-Raymond Abrial (1996). The B-Book: Assigning Programs to Meanings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-49619-5. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "Academy of Europe: Abrial Jean-Raymond". https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/Abrial_Jean-Raymond. 
  12. ↑ Abrial, Jean-Raymond (22 August 2005). "Managing the Construction of Large Computerized Systems". Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. http://www.inf.ethz.ch/news/focus/res_focus/feb_2005. Retrieved September 26, 2011. 
  13. ↑ Abrial, Jean-Raymond (2010). Modeling in Event-B: System and Software Engineering. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521895569. https://www.event-b.org/abook.html. 
  14. ↑ Amy, Bernard (January 2026). "Testimonies from Bernard Amy, researcher and mountaineer, and Jean-Louis and Odette Bernezat, mountain and Saharan guides". FACS FACTS (BCS-FACS) 2026 (1): 19–23. ISSN 0950-1231. https://www.bcs.org/media/veppnllv/facs-jan26.pdf#page=18.00. 
  15. ↑ "J.R. Abrial, A Pioneer in the Scientific Development of Computer Languages". 26 May 2025. https://lefenetrou.blogspot.com/2025/05/bienvenue-js2025-de-nantes-universite.html. 



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