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Standing on the Shoulders of a Giant

One Persons Experience of Turings Impact (Summary of the Alan M. Turing Lecture)

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Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2012)

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Abstract

A quote attributed to Isaac Newton says “If I have seen a little further it’s because I stand on the shoulders of giants”. This was indeed stated by Newton, but the general metaphor of a dwarf standing on a giant goes back many, many years earlier. I would recommend the wonderful 1965 book by Robert K. Merton, referred to fondly as OTSOG (on the shoulders of giants) [1] .

Versions of this talk were presented in a number of conferences and symposia during 2012, to celebrate the Alan M. Turing Centennial year. Parts of the more recent research reported upon here were supported by an Advanced Research Grant to DH from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Community’s FP7 Programme.

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100, Israel

    David Harel

Authors
  1. David Harel
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Centre for Discrete Mathematics and its Applications, University of Warwick, Warwick, UK

    Artur Czumaj

  2. Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Kurt Mehlhorn

  3. Computer Laboratory,, University of Cambridge, UK

    Andrew Pitts

  4. ETH Zurich, Switzerland

    Roger Wattenhofer

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Harel, D. (2012). Standing on the Shoulders of a Giant. In: Czumaj, A., Mehlhorn, K., Pitts, A., Wattenhofer, R. (eds) Automata, Languages, and Programming. ICALP 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7392. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31585-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31585-5_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-31584-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-31585-5

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