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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bowen, Jonathan P., Habrias, Henri
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07353
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Table of Contents:
  • Jean-Raymond Abrial is one of the central figures in the development of formal methods for software and systems engineering. Over a career spanning more than five decades, he has played a decisive role in the creation of the Z specification notation, the B-Method, and Event-B, and in demonstrating their applicability to large-scale industrial systems. This paper presents a scholarly biographical account of Abrial's life and work, tracing the evolution of his ideas from early work on real-time languages and databases, through foundational contributions to formal specification, refinement, and proof, to the development of industrial-strength tool support such as the Atelier~B and the Rodin platform. The paper situates Abrial's contributions within their historical, intellectual, and industrial contexts, and assesses their lasting impact on software engineering and formal reasoning about programs.