John Alan Robinson was born on March 9, 1930, and died on August 5, 2016.
He was a philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist.
John was a professor emeritus at Syracuse University.
His major contribution was to the foundations of automated theorem proving.
John’s unification algorithm eliminated one source of combinatorial explosion in resolution provers; it also prepared the ground for the logic programming paradigm, in particular for the Prolog language.
He received the 1996 Herbrand Award for Distinguished Contributions to Automated Reasoning.
He died in Portland, Maine from a ruptured aneurysm following surgery for pancreatic cancer.
John Alan Robinson passed away at 86 years old.