Minker Co-Authors Book Chapter on Computational Logic

Jack Minker, professor emeritus of computer science and UMIACS and a leading authority in artificial intelligence, deductive and disjunctive deductive databases, logic programming and non-monotonic reasoning, recently contributed an invited chapter to the “Handbook of the History on Logic, Volume 9, Computational Logic.”

The chapter, which Minker co-authored with Dietmar Seipel (University of Würzburg) and Carlo Zaniolo (UCLA), provides a detailed history of deduction in databases, beginning with its inception in the late 1950s. This includes syntax, semantics, implementations and applications.

In the chapter, the authors point out that while logic programs may contain function symbols, databases generally permit only constant symbols, including numbers. Alternate semantics have been proposed for both deductive (Datalog) and disjunctive deductive (disjunctive Datalog) databases. The chapter highlights the most influential semantics.

The “Handbook of the History of Logic” series brings to the development of logic the best in modern techniques of historical and interpretative scholarship.

Computational logic was born in the 20th century and evolved along with the advent of the first electronic computers and the growing importance of computer science, informatics and artificial intelligence. With more than 10,000 people working in research and development of logic and logic-related methods, the field has become greatly diversified.

Minker was a pioneer in deductive and disjunctive deductive databases. He developed the first result in disjunctive databases, the Generalized Closed World Assumption (GCWA), for default-negated data. Together with his former Ph.D. students, Jorge Lobo and Arcot Rajasekar, they developed the semantics of disjunctive deductive databases and disjunctive logic programs and laid the foundation for subsequent work in disjunctive theories.

Minker was the founding chair of UMD’s Department of Computer Science from 1974 to 1979. During his tenure as chair, the department ranked among the Top-12 computer science departments in the U.S. Minker was also among the first permanent members of UMIACS.

Minker is the author of one book and co-author, editor or co-editor of six books, and has authored almost 200 refereed publications.

In addition to his scientific work, Minker has worked in support of human rights of scientists since 1972. His memoir "Scientific Freedom and Human Rights: Scientists of Conscience During the Cold War,” was published in 2012. The book describes Minker’s efforts on behalf of over 350 computer scientists from 14 countries whose human rights were violated.

Among Minker’s major awards are the 2005 Allen Newell Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). He is also the recipient of the 1996 University of Maryland President’s Medal. For his work in human rights, Minker received the 2011 Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award from the New York Academy of Science.