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Programming Research Group

1965 establishments in England2011 disestablishments in EnglandComputer science institutes in the United KingdomDepartments of the University of OxfordEducational institutions disestablished in 2011
Educational institutions established in 1965Formal methods organizationsFormal methods stubsOxford University Computing Laboratory
Hoare
Hoare

The Programming Research Group (PRG) was part of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory (OUCL) in Oxford, England, along with the Numerical Analysis Group, until OUCL became the Department of Computer Science in 2011.The PRG was founded by Christopher Strachey (1916–1975) in 1965. It was originally located at 45 Banbury Road. After Strachey's untimely death, C.A.R. Hoare, FRS took over the leadership in 1977. The PRG ethos is summed up by the following quotation from Strachey, found and promulgated by Tony Hoare after he arrived at the PRG: It has long been my personal view that the separation of practical and theoretical work is artificial and injurious. Much of the practical work done in computing, both in software and in hardware design, is unsound and clumsy because the people who do it have not any clear understanding of the fundamental design principles of their work. Most of the abstract mathematical and theoretical work is sterile because it has no point of contact with real computing. One of the central aims of the Programming Research Group as a teaching and research group has been to set up an atmosphere in which this separation cannot happen. The PRG moved to 8–11 Keble Road in 1984. During the later 1980s and early 1990s, some members of the PRG were housed at 2 South Parks Road, including Joseph Goguen (who was at the PRG during 1988–1996). Tony Hoare retired in 1999 and the PRG was led by Samson Abramsky from 2000. The PRG continued until the renaming of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory to the Department of Computer Science on 1 June 2011, under the leadership of Bill Roscoe, a former member of the PRG.The PRG was a centre of excellence in the field of formal methods, playing a leading role in the development of the Z notation (initiated by a visit of Jean-Raymond Abrial) and CSP (together with the associated Occam programming language). It won Queen's Awards with IBM and Inmos for work in this area.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Programming Research Group (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Programming Research Group
Parks Road, Oxford City Centre

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Keble Triangle

Parks Road
OX1 3AQ Oxford, City Centre
England, United Kingdom
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Department of Materials, University of Oxford
Department of Materials, University of Oxford

The Department of Materials at the University of Oxford, England was founded in the 1950s as the Department of Metallurgy, by William Hume-Rothery, who was a reader in Oxford's Department of Inorganic Chemistry. It is part of the university's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division Around 190 staff work in the Department of Materials full-time, including professors, lecturers, independent fellows, researchers and support staff. There are around 30 academic staff positions of which four are Chairs. The Isaac Wolfson Chair in Metallurgy was set up in the late 1950s. Sir Peter Hirsch formerly held the chair. The current holder of the chair is Peter Bruce FRS. Other Chairs in the department include the Vesuvius Chair of Materials held by Patrick Grant FREng, Professor in the Physical Examination of Materials formerly held by David Cockayne FRS and the James Martin Chair in Energy Materials held by James Marrow.Research is done in the broad fields of structural and nuclear materials, device materials, polymers and biomaterials, nanomaterials, processing and manufacturing, characterization, and computational materials modelling. The department offers undergraduate degrees in Materials Science and Materials, Economics and Management, having around 160 undergraduates, and around 240 postgraduate students, particularly DPhil students pursuing advanced research.In addition to its own buildings, the department shares seven buildings with the Department of Engineering Science on a triangular plot with Banbury Road to the west and Parks Road to the east. In addition, the department has extensive facilities at Begbroke Science Park, north of the city, which was purchased and founded on behalf of the university by Professor Brian Cantor when he was head of the department in the 1990s.

Keble College, Oxford
Keble College, Oxford

Keble College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its main buildings are on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum and the University Parks. The college is bordered to the north by Keble Road, to the south by Museum Road, and to the west by Blackhall Road. Keble was established in 1870, having been built as a monument to John Keble, who had been a leading member of the Oxford Movement which sought to stress the Catholic nature of the Church of England. Consequently, the college's original teaching focus was primarily theological, although the college now offers a broad range of subjects, reflecting the diversity of degrees offered across the wider university. In the period after the Second World War, the trends were towards scientific courses (proximity to the university science area east of the University Museum influenced this). As originally constituted, it was for men only and the fellows were mostly bachelors resident in the college. Like many of Oxford's men's colleges, Keble admitted its first mixed-sex cohort in 1979.It remains distinctive for its once-controversial neo-gothic red-brick buildings designed by William Butterfield. The buildings are also notable for breaking from Oxbridge tradition by arranging rooms along corridors rather than around staircases, in order that the scouts could supervise the comings and goings of visitors (Girton College, Cambridge, similarly breaks this tradition). Keble is one of the larger colleges of the University of Oxford, with 460 undergraduates and 525 graduate students in 2021/22. Keble's sister college at the University of Cambridge is Selwyn College.

Blackhall Road, Oxford
Blackhall Road, Oxford

Blackhall Road is a road running between Keble Road to the north and Museum Road to the south in central Oxford, England, dating from the late 19th century. It is named after Black Hall, dating from at least 1519, fronting onto St Giles', and now part of St John's College. Houses in the road were leased by St John's College between 1865–75.Keble College occupies the entire east side of the road, including the O'Reilly Theatre. In the 1970s, the architects Ahrends, Burton and Koralek designed yellow brick buildings on the southern part of Blackhall Road. These include the "Elephant House" at the southern end, nicknamed due to its resemblance to the elephant house at London Zoo.At the southern end on the west side are houses owned by St John's College. At the northern end to the west is the Department of Statistics of the University of Oxford, until 2013 the Mathematical Institute. The historian J.K. Fotheringham (1874–1936), an expert on ancient astronomy and chronology, and Fellow of Magdalen College, lived at 6 Blackhall Road. The classical historian Abel Hendy Jones Greenidge lived at 4 Blackhall Road. The poet and art critic Hasan Shahid Suhrawardy (1890–1965), an associate of the writer D.H. Lawrence, also lived in the road when they met in 1915.The road includes one of the longest lasting and still extant pieces of outdoor graffiti in Oxford. On a brick wall forming part of Keble College, opposite the Department of Statistics building, are two large dinosaurs in white and blue paint. The caption "REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DINOSAUR!" is next to the white dinosaur. By the blue dinosaur, perhaps intended to resemble an alligator, is a riposte "I DID, AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO ME". It is thought that the white graffiti, the earlier of the two, was the work of delegates at the Drapers' Conference at Keble in the early 1970s and was a reply to the students of Keble's neighbour St John's College who had formed the St John’s Destroy Keble Society. Close by in Parks Road is the Oxford University Museum of Natural History where a number of fossilized dinosaur skeletons can be seen. There was a hatching-dinosaur-egg addition on the wall for a while but it has disappeared.

Parks Road
Parks Road

Parks Road is a road in Oxford, England, with several Oxford University colleges along its route. It runs north–south from the Banbury Road and Norham Gardens at the northern end, where it continues into Bradmore Road, to the junction with Broad Street, Holywell Street and Catte Street to the south. At the northern end, the road runs alongside the University Parks, hence its name. Opposite the Parks is the former home of the Irish novelist Joyce Cary, who lived here at 12 Parks Road with his family from 1920 until his death in 1957. This is now recorded with a blue plaque. The road adjoins South Parks Road to the east about halfway along. Parks Road, South Parks Road and the Parks surround the main Science Area of the University of Oxford. The Clarendon Laboratory (physics), Department of Engineering Science (including the dominating 1960s Thom Building) and the Department of Materials are all on Parks Road in the main science area. The Oxford University Computing Laboratory is opposite the Parks on the corner with Keble Road. Both Keble College (south of Keble Road and north of Museum Road) and Wadham College have their main entrances on Parks Road, while St John's College and Trinity College each back onto it. The garden of Rhodes House has an entrance on Parks Road. In December 2018 it was announced that the proposed new graduate college of the university, Parks College, opening in September 2020, will be located on Parks Road, after which it is named.The Oxford University Museum of Natural History is on the east side of Parks Road opposite Keble College. Just to the south on the corner with South Parks Road is the Radcliffe Science Library. The right hand half of the grass area in front of the museum has a large basement reading room for the library underneath it. At the southern end are the Weston Library, opened in 2015 after being transformed internally from the 20th-century New Bodleian Library building, on the corner with Broad Street to the west and the King's Arms public house on the corner with Holywell Street to the east. The road was formerly known as Park Street.