Peter Buneman facts for kids

Peter Buneman, born in 1943, is a British computer scientist. He is famous for his work with computer databases and how they store information. He has helped us understand how computers manage and use large amounts of data.

Learning and Degrees

Peter Buneman studied at the University of Cambridge, where he earned a degree in mathematics. He then went to the University of Warwick and completed his PhD in 1970. His studies helped him become an expert in how computers handle information.

Working with Computers

After finishing his PhD, Peter Buneman worked at the University of Edinburgh for a short time. He then became a professor of computer science at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, where he taught for many years.

In 2002, he returned to the University of Edinburgh. There, he helped build a strong research group focused on databases. He also helped start the UK Digital Curation Centre in Edinburgh. This center helps make sure digital information is kept safe and usable for a long time.

What is Data Provenance?

Peter Buneman is well-known for his research on how databases work. He explored how databases connect with programming languages. He also looked into managing "semi-structured data," which is like the information you find on the internet.

More recently, he has focused on data provenance. This means tracking where data comes from and how it changes over time. It is important for making sure information is reliable.

Buneman Graphs

In the field of computational biology, which uses computers to study living things, Peter Buneman is known for his work on phylogenetic trees. These trees show how different species are related to each other. He helped create a way to build these trees using something called "Buneman graphs," which are named after him.

Awards and Recognition

Peter Buneman has received many important awards for his work. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, which is a very high honor for scientists in the UK. He is also a fellow of the ACM and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2002, he won a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.

He has led major conferences in data management, like SIGMOD in 1993 and VLDB in 2008. He also chaired the main database theory conference, PODS, in 2001.

In 2013, Peter Buneman was given the title of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). This award recognized his important contributions to data systems and computing.

Family Life

Peter Buneman is the son of Oscar Buneman, who was also a famous physicist.