Simon Peyton Jones facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Simon Peyton Jones
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Peyton Jones in 2016
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| Born | 18 January 1958 Simon's Town, Cape Town, South Africa
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| Citizenship | British |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge (BSc, Dipl.) |
| Known for | Glasgow Haskell Compiler C-- |
| Awards | ACM Fellow (2004) |
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Simon Peyton Jones, born on January 18, 1958, is a British computer scientist. He studies how to create and use special types of computer languages called functional programming languages. He is especially interested in something called "lazy functional programming."
Contents
His School Days
Simon Peyton Jones went to the University of Cambridge. In 1979, he earned a degree in Electrical Sciences. He also studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1980, he finished a special diploma in Computer Science. He did not get a PhD, which is a higher degree.
What He Does
Simon Peyton Jones worked in companies for two years. After that, he taught at University College London. From 1990 to 1998, he was a professor at the University of Glasgow.
From 1998 to 2021, he worked as a researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England. Since 2021, he has been an engineering fellow at Epic Games.
Programming Languages
He helped design the Haskell programming language. He is also a main developer of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC). This is a special program that turns Haskell code into something a computer can understand.
He also helped create the C-- programming language. This language is used inside compilers. It helps turn code from one language into a final program. GHC uses C-- to work.
Helping Schools
Peyton Jones leads the Computing At School (CAS) group. This group wants to make sure computer science is taught well in schools. Because of his work, he became the chair of the UK National Centre for Computing Education in 2019.
Microsoft Excel
Since 2003, Peyton Jones has helped develop new features for Microsoft Excel. In 2021, new features like "anonymous functions" and "let expressions" became available in Excel. These features help people write more powerful formulas.
Awards and Recognition
Simon Peyton Jones has received many awards for his work.
In 2004, he became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. This is a big honor for people who work with computers. In 2011, he became a member of the Academia Europaea.
In 2011, he and Simon Marlow won an award for their work on GHC. This award was from SIGPLAN, a group focused on programming languages.
He has received honorary doctorates from several universities. These include the University of Glasgow in 2013, and the University of Kent and University of Bath in 2017. An honorary doctorate is a special degree given to someone for their achievements.
In 2016, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). This is a very important group for scientists in the UK. In 2017, he became a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.
He also received the ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award in 2016.
In 2022, he was given the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) award. This was for his services to education and computer science. He also became a Distinguished Affiliate Scholar at Pembroke College Cambridge. He is also a Distinguished Honorary Fellow at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.
See also
In Spanish: Simon Peyton Jones para niños
