The title says it all, but I'm curious because it isn't obvious how a theorem prover came to be named 'Isabelle'. Was it named for a person? I couldn't find out by some Google searches.
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2Have you tried asking on a Isabelle users mailing list? – D.W. Apr 05 '16 at 20:51
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I haven't - I've never used Isabelle myself - I've only read a paper that used it. – IIM Apr 06 '16 at 11:35
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1This question strikes me to be offtopic as it is about the history of a software artifact, not a CS artifact. That said, articles have been published about Isabelle so I'll let the community decide. – Raphael Apr 13 '16 at 00:08
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1Wikipedia updated :-) – Mark Hurd Apr 28 '16 at 07:28
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A little google-fu (and my own memory) tells me it was apparently named by Larry Paulson after Gerard Huet's daughter.
Gerard Huet happens to be one of the people behind the less poetically named Coq theorem prover.
Small world!
cody
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2How is the name Coq less poetic? It's a pun on no less than three words (the Calculus of Constructions CoC, one of the founders of the theory Thierry Coquand, and the French word for rooster (which is an emblem of France, and most of the Coq founders were French)). – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Apr 13 '16 at 01:20
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The Coq name is certainly clever (there was an additional constraint that academic programing languages were named after an animal, see e.g. Ocaml) but I do think it's a bit less poetic, especially given the additional pun (in English at least) that I wouldn't put beyond Gerhard Huet to be intentional. – cody Apr 13 '16 at 13:28