Cliff Jones (computer scientist)

{{Short description|British computer scientist (born 1944)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2022}}

{{Use British English|date=June 2012}}

{{about other people|the British computer scientist|Cliff Jones}}

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Cliff Jones

| image = Cliff_Jones_Swansea.png

| caption = Cliff Jones in Swansea

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1944|6|1|df=y}}

| birth_place =

| death_date =

| death_place =

| residence =

| citizenship =

| nationality = British

| ethnicity =

| fields =

| workplaces = IBM Laboratory Vienna
Victoria University of Manchester
Newcastle University

| alma_mater = University of Oxford

| doctoral_advisor = C. A. R. Hoare{{MathGenealogy|86794}}

| thesis_title = Development Methods for Computer Programs Including a Notion of Interference

| academic_advisors =

| doctoral_students = John Fitzgerald
Tobias Nipkow

| notable_students =

| known_for = Vienna Development Method

| author_abbrev_bot =

| author_abbrev_zoo =

| influences =

| influenced =

| awards =

| religion =

| signature =

| footnotes =

}}

Clifford "Cliff" B. Jones {{Post-nominals|country=GBR|FREng}}{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=List of Fellows|url=http://www.raeng.org.uk/about-us/people-council-committees/the-fellowship/list-of-fellows|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140809000739/http://www.raeng.org.uk:80/about-us/people-council-committees/the-fellowship/list-of-fellows |archive-date=9 August 2014 |access-date=|website=Royal Academy of Engineering}} (born 1 June 1944) is a British computer scientist, specializing in research into formal methods.{{cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=Bio · Cliff B Jones|url=http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/cliff.jones/bio/|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150623073809/http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk:80/cliff.jones/bio/ |archive-date=23 June 2015 |accessdate=18 December 2020|website=|publisher=Newcastle University|location=UK}} He undertook a late DPhil at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory (now the Oxford University Department of Computer Science) under Tony Hoare, awarded in 1981. Jones' thesis proposed an extension to Hoare logic for handling concurrent programs, rely/guarantee.{{Cite thesis|last=Jones|first=C.B.|title=Development Methods for Computer Programs including a Notion of Interference|date=June 1981|degree=DPhil|publisher=Oxford University|url=http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/9025/PRG-25.pdf|doi=}}

Prior to his DPhil, Jones worked for IBM, between the Hursley and Vienna Laboratories. In Vienna, Jones worked with Peter Lucas, Dines Bjørner and others on the Vienna Development Method (VDM), originally as a method for specifying the formal semantics of programming languages, and subsequently for specifying and verifying programs.{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=Research · Cliff B Jones|url=http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/cliff.jones/research/#vdm|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140713165409/http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk:80/cliff.jones/research/#vdm |archive-date=13 July 2014 |access-date=18 December 2020|website=|publisher=Newcastle University|location=UK|language=en}}

Cliff Jones was a professor at the Victoria University of Manchester in the 1980s and early 1990s, worked in industry at Harlequin for a period, and is now a Professor of Computing Science at Newcastle University. He has been editor-in-chief of the Formal Aspects of Computing journal.{{cite book| url=https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=63556 | title=Formal Aspects of Computing | volume=1 | publisher=Association for Computing Machinery | accessdate=19 August 2018 | year=1989 }}

As well as formal methods, Jones also has interests in interdisciplinary aspects of computer science and the history of computer science.{{DBLP|name=Cliff B. Jones}}[http://en.scientificcommons.org/cliff_b_jones Cliff B. Jones: Publication List] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120312140921/http://en.scientificcommons.org/cliff_b_jones |date=12 March 2012 }}, Scientific Commons.