The History of the DReaM Group

Abstract

I describe the history of the DReaM Group (Discovery and Reasoning in Mathematics), which I created after my arrival at the University of Edinburgh in 1971. The group has been characterised by its diversity of approaches to the representation of and reasoning with knowledge, including: deduction; meta-level reasoning; learning, especially of new reasoning methods; representation creation and change; as well as applications to problems as diverse as formal verification, analogical blending and computational creativity. From 1982, we have been supported first by a series of EPSRC rolling grants and then, when this funding mechanism ceased, platform grants. Now that the latter mechanism has also ceased, we felt it was time to take stock, celebrate our achievements, assess our strengths and plan our future research. This history lays the bedrock for that self-analysis. Inevitably, space restrictions have forced me to be highly selective in what research I cover. I apologise to those whose excellent research I've had to omit or only hint at. My selection has been mainly influenced by my desire to illustrate our methodological and application diversity. I hope that the other chapters in this book will fill some of those gaps.