Talk:Tree (automata theory)

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History/origin of tree automata

My father, John E. Doner, invented tree automata in 1965, and he has made it known to me that he'd very much like it wikipedia acknowledged this fact. Not being a mathematician myself, I'm not eager to just edit the entry directly, so I'm hoping someone reads this and can help me out. I gather that in the past there was some issue with needing a citation for this; he sent me a PDF of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society Volume 12, Number 7 Issue 85 November 1965, and pointed out that immediately after the item about his work (65T-468 on pg. 819), the next item (65T-469 on pg. 820) which is a very similar item by a different author (apparently they were at the same conference and were working on the same problem posed by someone there), includes the acknowledgement "This result was first obtained by J. E. Doner". Would this be a suitable citation for him being the inventor of tree automata? Mark T Doner (talk) 23:49, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm skeptical that this specific reference is usable for the invention of the automata (which are not really the topic of this article, but rather of Tree automaton). However, arXiv:1510.02036 (a 1973 survey by Engelfriet already used as a reference at the tree automaton article) states on page 69 "Bottom-up finite tree automata were invented around 1965 independently by [Doner, 1965, 1970] and [Thatcher & Wright, 1968] (and somewhat later by [Pair & Quere, 1968])." I think that would be a usable source for a similar statement in the tree automaton article, giving credit to all of those people. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:02, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@David Eppstein thanks I'll try over on that one Mark T Doner (talk) 00:17, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]