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MAURICE V. WILKES
1913–2010
elected foreign associate in 1977
“For pioneering development of practical electronic computers and
leadership in computer science.”
BY MARTIN CAMPBELL-KELLY
sUBMiTTed By THe Nae HoMe secreTary
sIR MAURICE VINCENT WILKES FRS, a pioneer of British
computing and professor emeritus at cambridge University,
died on November 29, 2010, at the age of 97.
Wilkes was born on June 26, 1913, in dudley, a town in
the english midlands. His father was an administrator for the
estate of the earl of dudley, his mother a housewife. He was
educated at King Edward VI Grammar School in the town of
stourbridge. in his early teens he read Wireless World and built
crystal sets—experience for which he was very grateful when
it came to building electronic computers two decades later.
He entered st. John’s college, cambridge University, in 1931,
where he read mathematics.
in 1935 he became a research student at the cavendish
laboratory, cambridge University, working on the propagation
of long radio waves. a turning point in his life occurred
when he attended a lecture by douglas Hartree, a computing
expert and professor of mathematical physics at Manchester
University. in 1937, when the university established the
Mathematical laboratory for practical computing, Wilkes
leapt at the opportunity to become its manager.
On the outbreak of war, Wilkes was enlisted in the scientific
war effort. He worked on radar and operations research,
building up a network of contacts that would prove invaluable
in the postwar period.
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at the end of the war, Wilkes returned to cambridge
University, with the mission to rebuild the Mathematical
laboratory. electronic computing was in the air. at the Moore
school of electrical engineering, University of Pennsylvania,
the ENIAC, the world’s first electronic computer for defense
calculations, designed by J. Presper eckert and John Mauchly,
had just been completed. eckert and Mauchly, together with
John von Neumann, subsequently produced a proposal for the
edVac, the blueprint of the modern stored-program digital
computer. in the summer of 1946, Wilkes was one of a handful
of Britishers invited to attend a course on electronic computers
at the Moore school. sailing home on the Queen Mary he
began the design of a machine he called the electronic delay
storage automatic calculator, edsac for short, an acronym
consciously chosen as a tribute to the edVac.
Work started on building the edsac in early 1947. The
following spring Wilkes married Nina Twyman, a classicist he
had met in cambridge; they had three children.
almost everything in the edsac had to be done from
first principles—memory technology, electronic arithmetic
and logic, and control circuits. The machine sprang to life on
May 6, 1949, the world’s first practical electronic computer.
(Manchester University had got there first in June 1948 with
an experimental machine, but the EDSAC was the first capable
of running realistic programs.) By the beginning of 1950 the
Mathematical laboratory was offering a regular computing
service. Wilkes decided that the laboratory would specialize
in writing programs rather than building computers. He was
perhaps the first person to recognize that what we now call
software (a term not used until about 1960) would prove to be
a worthwhile academic pursuit. Heavy use of the laboratory’s
facilities was made by cambridge University’s researchers,
including some of its luminaries—such as John Kendrew,
Fred Hoyle, and Martin Ryle. Kendrew’s calculations for
determination of the molecular structure of myoglobin, for
which he received a Nobel Prize in 1962, were largely done on
the edsac.
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MAURICE V. WILKES
edsac was soon loaded to capacity, and plans were
laid for a successor, edsac 2. Wilkes came up with a new
design principle—which he called microprogramming—that
greatly simplified the logical design of the new computer.
Microprogramming was Wilkes’s most important scientific
contribution to computing, and had he done nothing else he
would be famous for that. in the early 1960s iBM based its
world-beating system/360 computers around the idea, and it
remains a cornerstone of computer architecture.
Wilkes played an influential role in promoting computing
in Britain, being elected to the royal society in 1956, becoming
inaugural president of the British computer society in 1957,
and serving as the British representative for the international
federation of information Processing societies.
He was appointed professor of computer technology at
cambridge in 1965, a title deliberately chosen to distance
himself from the theoretically minded professors of computing
science who were by then being appointed in large numbers.
at heart he was an engineer. He received the association for
computing Machinery’s (acM) Turing award in 1967 and the
Harry goode Memorial award of the american federation
of information societies in 1968. later honors included the
institute of electrical and electronics engineers (ieee)/acM
eckert-Mauchly award, the Mcdowell award of the ieee
computer society, the Pender award of the University of
Pennsylvania, and the faraday Medal of the institution of
electrical engineers.
Wilkes remained director of the computer laboratory (the
name was changed from the Mathematical laboratory in 1970)
until he reached the statutory retirement age of 67 in 1980. His
tenure had seen computers evolve from scientific instruments
to information processing machines that were the basis of a
worldwide industry.
Wilkes was deeply interested in the history of his subject. His
early writings in the 1950s are almost unique for the historical
context in which he placed contemporary developments.
He became an authority on charles Babbage, the Victorian
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computer pioneer, making a study of his manuscripts in the
Science Museum Library, London—the first modern scholar
to do so.
Wilkes loved america and americans. following his
retirement from cambridge University, he took up a position
as a senior consulting engineer with the digital equipment
corporation in Maynard, Massachusetts. There he enjoyed the
american way of life and hospitality and developed an abiding
friendship with i. Bernard cohen, professor of the history of
science at Harvard University.
Quite incapable of retiring, in 1986 he returned to cambridge,
where he became a board member of Olivetti-AT&T Research
laboratories. He continued to make technical contributions
and publish historical articles about charles Babbage and his
milieu. In 1992 he was the first recipient of the Kyoto Prize,
the most prestigious and financially rewarding award that
computer science can offer. He was elected a fellow of the
acM in 1994 and received the ieee von Neumann Medal in
1997. He was knighted in 2000.
sir Maurice is survived by his son, anthony, and two
daughters, Margaret and Helen; lady Nina predeceased him
in 2008.
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