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2022: The Year of Prolog
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2022: The Year of Prolog
Organized by The Association for Logic Programming and The Prolog Heritage Association
In the summer of 1972, Alain Colmerauer and his team in Marseille developed and implemented the first version of the logic programming language Prolog. Together with both earlier and later collaborations with Robert Kowalski and his colleagues in Edinburgh, this work laid the practical and theoretical foundations for the Prolog and logic programming of today. Prolog and its related technologies soon became key tools of symbolic programming and Artificial Intelligence.
The Year of Prolog celebrates the 50th anniversary of these events and highlights the continuing significance of Prolog and Logic Programming both for symbolic, explainable AI, and for computing more generally. It also aims to inspire a new generation of students, by introducing them to a more human-friendly, logic-based approach to computing.
The initiatives of the Year of Prolog include:
- The inaugural edition of the ALP Alain Colmerauer Prolog Heritage Prize (in short: the Alain Colmerauer Prize) for recent practical accomplishments that highlight the benefits of Prolog-inspired computing for the future.
- A Prolog Day Symposium, celebrated on November 10, 2022, in which the Alain Colmerauer Prize has been awarded. Subsequent editions of the prize will be awarded at the corresponding year's International Conference on Logic Programming, starting with ICLP 2023.
- A Prolog Education initiative, which will use Prolog to introduce schoolchildren and young adults to logic, programming, and AI and also map and provide Prolog education resources for educators. This is a long-term initiative which will be continued in future years.
- A survey paper on Fifty Years of Prolog and Beyond has been written, and published in the 20th anniversary special issue of the ALP journal Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP), Cambridge U. Press.
- There are further activities such as special sessions and invited talks at other events and conferences, including the 2022 International Conference on Logic Programming, ICLP 2022, at FLoC.
- A book on Prolog: 50 Years of Future, aimed at a broad audience, is being prepared for publication in Springer/Nature Publishing LNCS/LNAI series.
- ICLP 2023 will mark the closing of a year of Prolog celebrations. It will include the award of the 2023 ALP Alain Colmerauer Prize, and presentations of progress on the Prolog Book, education, online Prolog community, and other activities.
A Scientific Committee oversees the scientific activities of the Year of Prolog, supported by other committees in charge of the various initiatives of the Year of Prolog.
The Year of Prolog and its activities, including the Alain Colmerauer Prize, are sponsored by the Association for Logic Programming, the Prolog Heritage Association, the AI Journal, Institut Carnot Cognition, and Institut Fredrik Bull, among others.
