Jonathan Bowen


Jonathan P. Bowen is a British computer scientist and an Emeritus Professor at London South Bank University. His main contribution has been in formal methods, especially the Z notation. In addition, he has worked in the area of museum informatics, including the creation of the Virtual Library museums pages, an early web directory. His contributions also include works on the history of computing, especially Alan Turing.

Early life and education

Bowen was born in Oxford, the son of Humphry Bowen, and was educated at the Dragon School, Bryanston School, prior to his matriculation at University College, Oxford where he received the MA degree in Engineering Science.

Career

After initially working in the software industry, he later joined Imperial College, London, the Oxford University Computing Laboratory, the University of Reading, and London South Bank University. His main research was on formal methods in general and the Z notation in particular. He was chair of the Z User Group from the early 2000s until 2011. In 2002, Bowen was elected chair of the British Computer Society FACS Specialist Group on Formal Aspects of Computing Science. From 2005, Bowen was an associate editor-in-chief of the journal Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering. He was also an associate editor on the editorial board for the ACM Computing Surveys journal, covering software engineering and formal methods. From 2008 to 2009, he was an Associate at Praxis High Integrity Systems, working on a large industrial project using the Z notation.
Bowen's other major interest is the area of online museums. In 1994, he founded the Virtual Library museums pages, an online museums directory that was soon adopted by the International Council of Museums. Shortly after, he also started the Virtual Museum of Computing. In 2002, he founded Museophile Limited to help museums, especially online, for example with discussion forums.
From 2000 to 2006, Bowen headed the Centre for Applied Formal Methods as Professor of Computing at London South Bank University. From 2002, Bowen has also been the chairman of Museophile Limited and from 2017 he has been an adjunct professor at Southwest University in Chongqing, China. He has been a professor of Computer Science at Birmingham City University, Visiting Professor at the Pratt Institute, University of Westminster and King's College London, and a visiting academic at University College London.
Bowen has also worked in industry at Oxford Instruments, Marconi Instruments, Logica, Silicon Graphics, and Altran Praxis.

Recognition

In 1994, Bowen received the IEE Charles Babbage Premium for the best paper in the Software Engineering Journal.
Bowen was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in 2002 and of the British Computer Society in 2004. He was a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and is a Freeman of the City of London.

Selected books

Jonathan Bowen has written and edited a number of books, including:
  • Bowen, J.P., editor, Towards Verified Systems. Elsevier Science, Real-Time Safety Critical Systems series, volume 2, 1994..
  • Hinchey, M.G. and Bowen, J.P., editors, Applications of Formal Methods. Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science, 1995..
  • Bowen, J.P., Formal Specification and Documentation using Z: A Case Study Approach. International Thomson Computer Press, International Thomson Publishing, 1996..
  • Bowen, J.P. and Hinchey, M.G., editors, High-Integrity System Specification and Design. Springer-Verlag, London, FACIT series, 1999..
  • Hinchey, M.G. and Bowen, J.P., editors, Industrial-Strength Formal Methods in Practice. Springer-Verlag, London, FACIT series, 1999..
  • Hierons, R., Bowen, J.P., and Harman, M., editors, Formal Methods and Testing. Springer-Verlag, LNCS, Volume 4949, 2008..
  • Börger, E., Butler, M., Bowen, J.P., and Boca, P., editors, Abstract State Machines, B and Z. Springer-Verlag, LNCS, Volume 5238, 2008..
  • Boca, P.P., Bowen, J.P., and Siddiqi, J.I., editors, Formal Methods: State of the Art and New Directions. Springer, 2010., e-,.
  • Bowen, J.P., Keene, S., and Ng, K., editors, Electronic Visualisation in Arts and Culture. Springer Series on Cultural Computing, Springer, 2013..
  • Copeland, J., Bowen, J.P., Sprevak, M., Wilson, R., et al., The Turing Guide. Oxford University Press, 2017. , .
  • Hinchey, M.G., Bowen, J.P., Olderog, E.-R., editors, Provably Correct Systems. Springer International Publishing, NASA Monographs in Systems and Software Engineering series, 2017.,.
  • Giannini, T. and Bowen, J.P., editors, Museums and Digital Culture: New Perspectives and Research. Springer Series on Cultural Computing, Springer, 2019., e-,.
  • Giannini, T. and Bowen, J.P., editors, The Arts and Computational Culture: Real and Virtual Worlds. Springer Series on Cultural Computing, Springer, 2024., e-,