Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes FREng FRS (born June 26, 1913) is a British computer scientist credited with several important developments in computing.
Wilkes was born in Dudley, Staffordshire, England and read Mathematics at St. John's College, Cambridge from 1931 to 1934, continuing to complete a Ph.D. in physics on the topic of radio propagation of very long radio waves in the ionosphere in 1936. He was appointed to a junior faculty position of t...
more
Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes FREng FRS (born June 26, 1913) is a British computer scientist credited with several important developments in computing.
Wilkes was born in Dudley, Staffordshire, England and read Mathematics at St. John's College, Cambridge from 1931 to 1934, continuing to complete a Ph.D. in physics on the topic of radio propagation of very long radio waves in the ionosphere in 1936. He was appointed to a junior faculty position of the University of Cambridge through which he was involved in the establishment of a computing laboratory.
Wilkes was called up for military service during WWII and worked on radar at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE), and in operational research.
In 1945, Wilkes was appointed as the second director of the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory (later known as the Computer Laboratory).
The Cambridge laboratory initially had many different computing devices, including a differential analyser. Wilkes obtained a copy of...
less
