Historical introduction to ``Concrete domains'' by G. Kahn and G. D. Plotkin (Q1314353)

This is (for me) a very ``strange'' paper. Its purpose is mainly to emphasize the real impact of a well-known report of G. Kahn and G. D. Plotkin - ``Domaines concrets'' [Raport 336, IRIA-LABORIA (1978)], as a basis for ``the foundational research on semantics of programming languages''. Because we consider that the valuable ideas contained in any research article are very difficult to be ``measured'', and they are always a subject of a personal opinion, we only list some of the fundamental impacts of the report, as they have been selected by S. Brookes. To be more precise, we will only list some of the authors which have been considered to be strongly influenced by this article (especially in the ``realm'' of concurrent programming): D. Mac Queen, D. Scott, G. Berry, J. Y. Girard, T. Coquand. But the usefulness of this paper, the impressive vastity of the historical material involved and the value of the pointed ``key-steps'' in the development of ``domain theory'' -- as a beneficial contribution by G. Kahn and G. D. Plotkin -- cannot be neglected. We suggest the reader to consult also the last version of the treated paper [\textit{G. Kahn}, \textit{G. D. Plotkin}, ibid. 121, 187-277 (1993; see the paper reviewed above)].