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Date:Fri, 23 Apr 2004 12:52:29 +0100 
Subject:RE: Robin Popplestone 
From:Mike Sharples 
Volume-ID: 


Thanks for the information Stephen. I am greatly saddened to hear of the
Robin's death. He inspired, informed and brightened the lives of all of
us who knew him as PhD students at Edinburgh. There are countless
anecdotes about Robin, some apocryphal (such as his draft thesis sinking
with his boat in the North Sea) and others true (such as a high-level
delegation of Japanese robotics experts arriving at Edinburgh to meet
the famous UK robotics expert, and finally finding him in Greyfriar's
churchyard sitting sitting on a gravestone eating a bag of chips; or him
translating a presentation into French for a keynote talk in France and
then leaving the translation behind; or him leaving a lecture after five
minutes muttering "sorry I haven't prepared this one").

Robin was the architypal absent-minded professor. He was also an pioneer
of robotics and programming language design. Pop-11 was more than
another AI language. It inspired and led to innovations in AI
programming, and it also provided generations of students (myself
included) with an accessible and enjoyable way into AI programing and
with a tool for thinking.

Mike Sharples

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pop-forum@cs.bham.ac.uk
> [mailto:owner-pop-forum@cs.bham.ac.uk]On Behalf Of Stephen Isard
> Sent: 23 April 2004 11:45
> To: pop-forum@cs.bham.ac.uk
> Subject: Robin Popplestone
>
>
> http://news.scotsman.com/obituaries.cfm?id=451262004
>
> For those who didn't know him, this was the original Pop of Pop-2,
> Pop-11 and Poplog.
>
> Stephen Isard
>
>
>
====
Aaron Sloman, ( http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/ )
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
EMAIL A.Sloman AT cs.bham.ac.uk   (ReadATas@please !)
PAPERS: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/cogaff/ (And free book on Philosophy of AI)
FREE TOOLS: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/freepoplog.html