Christoph Walther

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Christoph Walther
Born (1950-08-09) 9 August 1950 (age 73)
Alma mater Karlsruhe University
Known for Walther recursion
Scientific career
Thesis A many-Sorted Calculus Based on Resolution and Paramodulation  (1984)
Doctoral advisor Peter Deussen

Christoph Walther (born 9 August 1950) [1] is a German computer scientist, known for his contributions to automated theorem proving. He is Professor emeritus at Darmstadt University of Technology. [2]

Contents

Selected publications

On automated theorem proving

On automated termination analysis

On the VeriFun verification system for functional programs

On many-sorted unification, resolution and paramodulation

On induction proving

Related Research Articles

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E is a high-performance theorem prover for full first-order logic with equality. It is based on the equational superposition calculus and uses a purely equational paradigm. It has been integrated into other theorem provers and it has been among the best-placed systems in several theorem proving competitions. E is developed by Stephan Schulz, originally in the Automated Reasoning Group at TU Munich, now at Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University Stuttgart.

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In computer science, in particular in knowledge representation and reasoning and metalogic, the area of automated reasoning is dedicated to understanding different aspects of reasoning. The study of automated reasoning helps produce computer programs that allow computers to reason completely, or nearly completely, automatically. Although automated reasoning is considered a sub-field of artificial intelligence, it also has connections with theoretical computer science and philosophy.

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Alan Richard Bundy is a professor at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, known for his contributions to automated reasoning, especially to proof planning, the use of meta-level reasoning to guide proof search.

Keith Leonard Clark is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, England.

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Many-sorted logic can reflect formally our intention not to handle the universe as a homogeneous collection of objects, but to partition it in a way that is similar to types in typeful programming. Both functional and assertive "parts of speech" in the language of the logic reflect this typeful partitioning of the universe, even on the syntax level: substitution and argument passing can be done only accordingly, respecting the "sorts".

The Handbook of Automated Reasoning is a collection of survey articles on the field of automated reasoning. Published in June 2001 by MIT Press, it is edited by John Alan Robinson and Andrei Voronkov. Volume 1 describes methods for classical logic, first-order logic with equality and other theories, and induction. Volume 2 covers higher-order, non-classical and other kinds of logic.

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SNARK, , is a theorem prover for multi-sorted first-order logic intended for applications in artificial intelligence and software engineering, developed at SRI International.

In computer programming, Walther recursion is a method of analysing recursive functions that can determine if the function is definitely terminating, given finite inputs. It allows a more natural style of expressing computation than simply using primitive recursive functions.

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The Conference on Artificial General Intelligence is a meeting of researchers in the field of Artificial General Intelligence organized by the AGI Society, steered by Marcus Hutter and Ben Goertzel. It has been held annually since 2008. The conference was initiated by the 2006 Bethesda Artificial General Intelligence Workshop and has been hosted at the University of Memphis ; Arlington, Virginia ; Lugano, Switzerland ; Google headquarters in Mountain View, California ; the University of Oxford, United Kingdom ; and at Peking University, Beijing, China, Quebec City, Canada. The AGI-23 conference was held in Stockholm, Sweden.

A verification condition generator is a common sub-component of an automated program verifier that synthesizes formal verification conditions by analyzing a program's source code using a method based upon Hoare logic. VC generators may require that the source code contains logical annotations provided by the programmer or the compiler such as pre/post-conditions and loop invariants. VC generators are often coupled with SMT solvers in the backend of a program verifier. After a verification condition generator has created the verification conditions they are passed to an automated theorem prover, which can then formally prove the correctness of the code.

Anti-unification is the process of constructing a generalization common to two given symbolic expressions. As in unification, several frameworks are distinguished depending on which expressions are allowed, and which expressions are considered equal. If variables representing functions are allowed in an expression, the process is called "higher-order anti-unification", otherwise "first-order anti-unification". If the generalization is required to have an instance literally equal to each input expression, the process is called "syntactical anti-unification", otherwise "E-anti-unification", or "anti-unification modulo theory".

Nachum Dershowitz is an Israeli computer scientist, known e.g. for the Dershowitz–Manna ordering and the multiset path ordering used to prove termination of term rewrite systems.

Wayne Snyder is an associate professor at Boston University known for his work in E-unification theory.

Tobias Nipkow is a German computer scientist.

TPTP is a freely available collection of problems for automated theorem proving. It is used to evaluate the efficacy of automated reasoning algorithms. Problems are expressed in a simple text-based format for first order logic or higher-order logic. TPTP is used as the source of some problems in CASC.

Deepak Kapur is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico.

References

  1. Simon Siegler and Nathan Wasser, ed. (2010). "Preface". Verification, Induction, Termination Analysis - Festschrift for Christoph Walther on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday. LNAI. Vol. 6463. Springer. ISBN   978-3-642-17171-0.
  2. Professuren und Gruppenleitungen Archived 2015-02-21 at the Wayback Machine (Section Emeriti und Professoren im Ruhestand) at Darmstadt University Web Site