Richard Bornat


Richard Bornat was a British author and researcher in the field of computer science. He was a Professor of Computer Programming at Middlesex University. Previously, he was at Queen Mary, University of London.

Background

Bornat was the son of Charles Bornat, an English architect. He was an academic at Queen Mary, University of London from 1977 to 2002, then moving to Middlesex University.

Research

Bornat's research interests included program proving in separation logic. His focus is on the proofs themselves, as opposed to any logical underpinnings. Much of the work involved discovering ways to state the properties of independent modules in a manner that makes their composition into useful systems conducive.
Bornat developed Jape, a "proof calculator"; he was involved in research on the usability of this tool for exploration of novel proofs.
Richard Bornat's PhD students included Samson Abramsky in the early 1980s.
In 2004, one of Bornat's students developed an aptitude test to "divide people up into programmers and non-programmers before they ever come into contact with programming." The test was first given to a group of students in 2005 during an experiment on the use of mental models in programming. In 2008 and 2014, Bornat partially retracted some of the claims, impugning its validity as a test for programming capability.
Over the last few years, Bornat worked on Quantum Programming. He implemented Qtpi, which is based on Gay and Nagarajan's CQP, using OCaml.

Publications

Bornat published a book entitled "Understanding and Writing Compilers: A Do It Yourself Guide", which is regarded as one of the most extensive resources on compiler development. Although it has been out of print for some time, he made it available as an online edition.
Other publications from Bornat include:
He also gave lively talks.