Congratulations Professor Wadler

Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from Toronto, the land where medium-rare hamburgers are illegal. I'm here for a conference and workshop, but I wanted to make a brief video to discuss something unexpected and truly remarkable. As we have a long academic legacy here at Input Output, and we have many incredible research fellows and senior research fellows. One of my personal favorites and a good close friend, with whom we've collaborated for a very long time, is Philip Wadler. He is the co-inventor of Plutus, the programming language of Cardano.

I'm excited to share that Professor Wadler from the University of Edinburgh has been elected as a fellow of the Royal Society. Let me share my screen real quick for the press release. Here we go. Hot off the presses: Philip Wadler elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Professor Philip Wadler, FRS, professor of theoretical computer science at the School of Informatics, has been elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

He joins existing fellows from the School of Informatics: James Hilston, Alan Bundy, Peter Putnam, and Gordon Plotkin, as well as notable past fellows including Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Charles Babbage, Dorothy Hodgkin, and Stephen Hawking. Fellowships at the Royal Society are granted to individuals who have made substantial contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering, science, and medical science. Each year, up to 52 new fellows from the United Kingdom, the rest of the Commonwealth nations, and Ireland are elected. Each candidate is considered on his or her own merits and can be proposed from any sector of the scientific community. Fellows are elected for life on the basis of excellence in science and are entitled to use the post-nominal FRS letters.

Wadler is one of the legends in many fields; he created Haskell with many others and has also contributed to C#, F#, Go, Rust, Scala, and Swift. But for us, he’s the guy who helped us design and think about Plutus. We’re so proud of him, and it’s a great honor to have as a senior research fellow someone who is a royal fellow like Sir Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. I hope he continues to be a great inspiration, and certainly, his contributions have helped our ecosystem immensely, giving us a lot of wonderful insight into how to do things the right way. So, congratulations to you, Professor Wadler!

I hope the whole Cardano community can join us in congratulating you. We’re super proud. Cheers!