Abstract
The more festive closing lecture of my chair was an opportunity to recall the main milestones of my research career since 1970 : tIF language for processing and querying files (1970-1973), inversion of recursive program computations (1973-1976), mathematical study of the syntactic and semantic properties of l-calculus and in particular its stability and sequentiality properties (1975-1982), automata theory (1989), asynchronous models, synchronous and vibrational models of parallelism and associated programming languages (1983-), real-time programming in synchronous languages (1983-2009), high-level design of digital circuits and logical characterization of their correct operation (1989-2009), formal verification of programs and circuits (1991-2009), and reactive programming on the Web and in music since 2013. All this was done with a fair number of forays into lateral subjects and a spell in industry as Scientific Director of Esterel Technologies, a company dedicated to industrial applications of my Esterel language and other synchronous languages (2001-2009). So my career path has not been a linear one, even if I've always kept as a guiding principle the need to carefully harmonize syntax and mathematical semantics in programming models and languages. It has varied according to the evolution of subjects and their impact on the world, and above all according to the many encounters I've had with fascinating researchers with different ways of thinking, which has given me unconventional theoretical ideas that I've been able to push to the limit in practice for some. For me, non-linear trajectories can be more fruitful in research than linear ones, at least in a fast-developing subject like computer science.
I ended this last lesson with a few thoughts on teaching and a big thank-you to the 66 seminarists I've had the opportunity to involve in my lectures and to the 11 successive holders of the Computer Sciences chair I inaugurated in 2009-2010, and of course to the Collège de France itself, for teaching there has been an immense honor.
