Special Guests for Corrado Böhm Memorial

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Henk Barendregt

Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

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Title of talk

Corrado Böhm: the white magician in programming and its semantics

Abstract

Several results of Corrado Böhm will be presented that have made programming more transparant and efficient. Self-compiling. In his PhD thesis Corrado carefully presented a program that could translate itself to machine code. This resulted in the boot-strap of computers warming up efficiently. Eliminating the go-to. With Giuseppe Jacopini Corrado showed that jumps in programming can be avoided. This resulted in structured programming. The foundation of functional programming. Corrado was one of the first to realize that the computational model of lambda calculus can be used for programming by introducing the CUCH-machine. Fine-structure of lambda terms. In a paper in Italian Corrado studied what lambda terms cannot be equated. This resulted in a deep analysis of lambda models.

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Silvio Micali

MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab, US

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Title of talk

ALGORAND A Truly Distributed Ledger

Abstract

A distributed ledger is a tamperproof sequence of data that can be read and augmented by everyone. Distributed ledgers stand to revolutionize the way a democratic society operates. They secure all kinds of traditional transactions –such as payments, asset transfers, titling– in the exact order in which they occur; and enable totally new transactions ---such as cryptocurrencies and smart contracts. They can remove intermediaries and usher in a new paradigm for trust. As currently implemented, however, distributed ledgers cannot achieve their enormous potential. Algorand is an alternative, democratic, and efficient distributed ledger. Unlike prior ledgers based on ‘proof of work’, it dispenses with ‘miners’. Indeed, Algorand requires only a negligible amount of computation. Moreover, its transaction history does not ‘fork’ with overwhelming probability: i.e., Algorand guarantees the finality of all transactions. Finally, Algorand enjoys flexible self-governance. By using its hallmark propose-and-agree process, Algorand can correct its course as necessary or desirable, without any ‘hard forks’.

Webpage by Mariangiola Dezani.