Alain Colmerauer is a French computer scientist and the creator of the logic programming language Prolog.
Education
After completing his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Grenoble, he spent 1967–1970 as Assistant Professor at the University of Montreal, where he created Q-Systems, one of the earliest linguistic formalisms used in the development of the TAUM-METEO machine translation prototype.
Career
In 1984, he created the company PrologIA to exploit the development of Prolog III. He is also one of the main founders of the field of Constraint logic programming. He was promoted in 1979 to Professeur 1ère classe (Full Professor), and in 1988 to Professeur classe exceptionnelle (University Professor). In 2000 he became Professeur classe exceptionnelle at the Faculty of Sciences of Luminy, University II of Aix-Marseille, Institut Universitaire de France, becoming Emeritus Professor in 2006.
From 1993 to 1995, he was Head of the Laboratoire d’Informatique de Marseille (LIM), a joint laboratory of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the University de Provence and the University de la Mediterranee.
Membership
French Academy of Sciences.