Robin Popplestone

Robin John Popplestone
Robin Popplestone on his yacht in Firth of Forth. August 1969.
Born	(1938-12-09)9 December 1938 Bristol, England, UK
Died	14 April 2004(2004-04-14) (aged 65) Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Fields	Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics
Institutions	University of Edinburgh, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Alma mater	Queen’s University Belfast, Manchester University, Leeds University
Known for	POP-2

Robin John Popplestone (9 December 1938 – 14 April 2004) was a pioneer in the fields of machine intelligence and robotics. He is known for developing the COWSEL and POP programming languages, and for his work on Freddy II with Pat Ambler at the University of Edinburgh Artificial Intelligence laboratory.

Robin Popplestone was born in Bristol in 1938, but after WWII his family moved to Belfast. He received an honours degree in mathematics from Queen's University Belfast in 1960. He started a PhD at Manchester University before moving to Leeds University. His project was to develop a program for automated theorem proving, but he got caught up in using the university computer to design a boat. He built the boat and set sail for the University of Edinburgh, where he had been offered a research position. A storm hit while crossing the North Sea, and the boat sank. A widely-believed story about Popplestone was that he never completed his PhD in mathematics because he lost his thesis manuscript in the boat, although Popplestone refused to corroborate this. The early part of his professional career was spent at the University of Edinburgh and the later part at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 1990, he was elected a Founding Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Due to illness, he retired in 2001 to the Glasgow area. He died in 2004 after a 10 year battle with prostate cancer.