Phil Bagwell

Last updated August 07, 2025

Phil Bagwell (died 6 October 2012^[1]) was a computer scientist known for his work and influence in the area of persistent data structures. He is best known for his 2000 invention of hash array mapped tries.^[2]

Bagwell was probably the most influential researcher in the field of persistent data structures from 2000 until his death. His work is now a standard part of the runtimes of functional programming languages including Clojure, Scala, and Haskell.^[3]

His contributions to building the Scala community are remembered in the Phil Bagwell Memorial Scala Community Award.^[4]

Publications

"Ideal Hash Trees" (2000), EPFL Technical Report
"Fast Functional Lists, Hash-Lists, Deques and Variable Length Arrays" (2002), EPFL Technical Report
"RRB Vector: A Practical General Purpose Immutable Sequence" (published posthumously in 2015) with Nicolas Stucki, Tiark Rompf, and Vlad Ureche, ICFP 2015
- "RRB-Trees: Efficient Immutable Vectors" (2012) with Tiark Rompf, EPFL Technical Report

References

↑ "R.I.P. Phil Bagwell | @lightbend". Lightbend. Retrieved 2022-03-19.
↑ Bagwell, Phil (2001). "Ideal Hash Trees".
↑ "Control.Concurrent.Map". Hackage: The Haskell Package Repository. Retrieved 2022-03-20.
↑ "Phil Bagwell Memorial Scala Community Award". The Scala Programming Language. Retrieved 2022-03-20.

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[1] "R.I.P. Phil Bagwell | @lightbend". Lightbend. Retrieved 2022-03-19.

[2] Bagwell, Phil (2001). "Ideal Hash Trees".

[3] "Control.Concurrent.Map". Hackage: The Haskell Package Repository. Retrieved 2022-03-20.

[4] "Phil Bagwell Memorial Scala Community Award". The Scala Programming Language. Retrieved 2022-03-20.

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