Xavier Leroy, Royal Society Milner Award 2016

Xavier Leroy from Inria has been awarded the Royal Society Milner Award 2016 in recognition of his research on the OCaml functional programming language and on the formal verification of compilers. This prize, created in homage to Professor Robin Milner, rewards a European researcher for his or her exceptional contribution to computer science. “The fact that it bears Milner’s name is particularly close to my heart”, says Xavier Leroy. “Robin Milner was a pioneer in fundamental computer science who founded whole areas of research on programming languages, machine-assisted proofs, and process computing. My work on the OCaml functional programming language and on the formal verification of compilers, as well as that of our Inria colleagues on the Coq proof assistant, are part of this legacy. It is very moving to see how far we have come, from Milner’s great ideas of the 1970s to tools as powerful and as widely used as OCaml and Coq.”

Photo G. Scagnelli/© Inria
https://royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/awards/milner-award/