Next: Photos Up: Dines Bjørner's Home Page Previous: Publication List Contents
Family: Dines Bjørner (DB) was born in Odense, Denmark, 4 October 1937. His father had an MSc degree in Mathematics (from Copenhagen University, 1931) and his mother a BA degree in Nordic and Modern English/America Literature (also from Copenhagen University, 1929). Since 1965 DB has been married to Kari Skallerud Bjørner (Oslo, Norway). They have two children, Charlotte (Sjæsølund College, with children Camilla and Caroline) and Nikolaj (Microsoft + Stanford; married to Bodil, with children Marianne, Katrine and Jakob).
Educational Background: DB graduated, in 1956, with a senior high school degree in Mathematics and Natural Sciences from Århus Cathedral School (founded around 1142). DB graduated in January 1962 with an MSc in Electronics Engineering and with a Ph.D. in Computer Science in January 1969 from the Technical University of Denmark (founded by Hans Christian Ørsted in 1828).
IBM Career: DB joined IBM in March 1962 at their Nordic Laboratories (founded by Cai Kinberg) in Stockholm, Sweden (where DB also first met Jean Paul Jacob and Gunnar Wedell). DB was transferred to the IBM Systems Development Division (IBM SDD) at San Jose, California, USA, in December 1963. While doing his Ph.D. (September 1965 – January 1969) DB was a lecturing consultant to IBM's European Systems Research Institute (ESRI) at Geneva, Switzerland (where DB received valuable guidance from Carlo Santacroce and where DB's friendship with Gerald and Dani Weinberg started) (1967–1968). In 1969 DB worked at IBM's Advanced Computing Systems (IBM ACS) Laboratory, Menlo Park, California – led by Gene Amdahl, and, later that year until early 1973 at IBM Research, San Jose (again Jean Paul Jacob became a colleague). Transferred to the IBM Vienna Laboratory (directed then by Heinz Zemanek), Austria, DB resigned from IBM in August 1975 to return to Denmark after basically 13 years abroad.
Career Outside and After IBM: During his stay at IBM Research DB was a visiting lecturer, for several quarters, at University of California at Berkeley (1971–1972), instigated by Lotfi Zadeh whom DB considers his main mentor and for whom DB has the fondest regards. DB was a visiting guest professor at Copenhagen University in the academic year 1975–1976, before taking up his chair in September 1976 at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). During the summer semester of 1980 DB was the Danish Chair Professor at the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel, Germany — hosted by Prof. Hans Langmaack. Together with a colleague, Prof. Christian Gram, DB instigated the Dansk Datamatik Center (DDC) in the summer of 1979 [62]. During the 1980s DB was chief scientist of DDC. In 1982–1984 DB was chairman of a Danish Government (Ministry of Education) Commission on Informatics. DB was the founding and first UN Director of UNU-IIST, the United Nations University's International Institute for Software Technology, located in Macau. DB was a visiting professor at NUS: National University of Singapore in the academic year 2004–2005 and at JAIST, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, near Kanazawa, calendar year 2006.
Lectures and Graduates: DB has lectured and regularly lectures on six continents in almost 50 countries and territories and has advised more than 130 MSc's and some two dozen PhDs.
DB was a visiting professor at Université Henri Poincaré and at INRIA/LORIA, Nancy, France (Oct.–Dec. 2007, hosted by Prof. Dominique Méry). During the fall and spring of 2008–2009 DB was lecturing at the Techn. Univ. of Graz, Austria (Oct.–Dec., hosted by Prof. Franz Wotawa) [78] and at University of Saarland, Saarbrücken, Germany (March, 1948, hosted by Prof. Wolfgang Paul). DB was a distinguished SICSA visitor at the University of Edinburgh (Sept.–Oct. 2009, hosted by Prof. Alan Bundy) and a visiting guest professor at Tokyo University, Japan (Nov.–Dec. 2009) hosted by Prof. Tetsuo Tamai. DB was a visiting professor at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria (April 2010, hosted by Prof. Jens Knoop) [69]; at Eövös Lorand Univ., Budapest (Oct. 2010, hosted by Prof. Istenes Zoltán), at Uppsala Univ., Sweden (Nov. 2010 and May 2016, hosted by Prof. Andreas Hamfeldt) [49]; at Univ. of Bergen, Norway (May 2012, hosted by Prof. Magne Haveraaen), and again (Nov. 2016) [48]; In Sept. 2017 DB was a guest researcher at TongJi Univ., Shanghai [46] hosted by Profs. Wu ZhiQiang and Otthein Herzog; Oct. 2018 at NUS, Singapore (hosted by Prof. Chin WeiNgan), and in Nov. 2018 at ECNU, (East China Normal Univ., hosted by Prof. Zhu HuiBiao) [44].
Research &c. Work: At IBM DB first worked in the hardware (logic and systems) design of such equipment as the IBM 1070 (Sweden), the IBM 1800 and IBM 1130 computers (San Jose), and, finally, with Gene Amdahl and Ed Sussenguth, on the IBM ACS/1 supercomputer (Menlo Park). At Research DB worked with the late John W. Backus and the late Ted Codd on Functional Languages, resp. Relational Data Base Systems. At Vienna, DB, together with such colleagues as the late Peter Lucas, the late Hans Bekič, Kurt Walk, and Cliff B. Jones, worked on a Denotational (–like) Semantics Description of PL/I while, with his colleagues conceiving, researching, developing and using VDM (the Vienna software Development Method). At DTU and at DDC, supported by the Commision of the European Community, DB initiated several advanced research & development projects:
Societal Work: DB was a co-founder of VDM-Europe in 1987 and moved VDM-Europe onto FME: Formal Methods Europe in 1991. DB co-chaired two of the VDM Symposia (1987, 1990), and the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) in 1989 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. DB was overall chairman of the IFIP World Congress in Dublin, Ireland in 1986, and was the instigator and General Chairman of the first World Congress on Formal Methods, FM'99, in Toulouse, France, September 20–24, 1999. DB was chairman of Academia Europaea's Informatics Section 2004–2009 (see also Grand Challenges of Informatics). DB has otherwise been involved in about 60 other scientific conferences. DB was a member of the parish council of the Virum (Lutheran Protestant Danish Folk) Church for some 5 years.
Awards &c.: DB is a Knight of The Danish Flag; is a member of Academia Europaea (MAE), the Danish Academy for Technical Sciences, (ATV); the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (MRANS [AB]), and and was a member of IFIP Working Groups 2.2 (1980-2004, resigned) and 2.3 (1980-2008, resigned). DB has received the John von Neumann Medal of the JvN Society of Hungary and the Ths. Masaryk Medal from the Masaryk University, Brno, The Czech Republic. DB received the Danish Engineering Society's (IDA) Informatics Division's first BIT prize, March 1999. DB was given the degree of honorary doctor from the Masaryk University, Brno, The Czech Republic, in 2004.
DB is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE and an FME (Formal Methods Europe) Fellow.
Publications: DB has published some 125 papers, authored 7 books (3 in both English and Chinese, and 1 in two English editions), 1 monograph, co-authored 2 books and edited & co-edited 11 books.
Research Interests: DB's research interests, since his Vienna days, have centered on programming methodology: methods as sets of principles for selecting and applying mathematics-based analysis and construction techniques and tools in order efficiently to construct efficient artefacts — notably software. DB sees his main contributions to be in the research, development and propagation of formal specification principles and techniques. Currently DB focuses on the triptych of (1) domain science & engineering, (2) requirements engineering and (3) software design methods — emphasising such that relate these in mathematical as well as technical ways: (1) intrinsic, support technology, management & organisation, rules & regulation, and human behaviour facets of domains; and (2) projection, instantiation, extension and initialisation of domain requirements, etc.
Acknowledgements: Among the very many people for whom DB has a special, professional fondness, people who, in various ways, have supported DB in his professional career, he wishes to bear tribute, in approximate chronological order, to (the late) Cai Kinberg, Gunnar Wedell, (the late) Jean Paul Jacob, (the late) Per Geert Jensen, (the late) Asger Kjerbye Nielsen, Peter Johansen, (the late) Gerald Weinberg, (the late) Gene Amdahl, (the late) Ed Sussenguth, Tien Chi (T.C.) Chen, (the late) Lotfi Zadeh, (the late) Ted Codd, (the late) John W. Backus, (the late) Peter Lucas, Cliff Jones, (the late) Hans Bekič, Kurt Walk, (the late) Christian Gram, Ole N. Oest, Erich Neuhold, (the late) Søren Prehn, Sir Tony Hoare, Hans Langmaack, Larry E. Druffel, Ines Wesley-Tanaskovic, Zhou Chao Chen, Kokichi Futatsugi, Chris George, Otthein Herzog and Klaus Havelund.
