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James Hardy Wilkinson
Born	September 27, 1919(1919-09-27) Strood, England
Died	October 5, 1986 (aged 67) Teddington, England
Nationality	English
Fields	Numerical Analysis
Institutions	National Physical Laboratory
Notable awards	Turing Award

James Hardy Wilkinson (27 September 1919 – 5 October 1986) was a prominent figure in the field of numerical analysis, a field at the boundary of applied mathematics and computer science particularly useful to physics and engineering.

Early life

Born in Strood, England, he attended the Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School in Rochester. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated top of the class.

Career

Taking up war work in 1940, he began working on ballistics but transferred to the National Physical Laboratory in 1946, where he worked with Alan Turing on the ACE computer project.

Later, Wilkinson's interests took him into the numerical analysis field, where he discovered many significant algorithms.

Recognition

He received the Turing Award in 1970 "for his research in numerical analysis to facilitate the use of the high-speed digital computer, having received special recognition for his work in computations in linear algebra and 'backward' error analysis." In the same year, he also gave the John von Neumann Lecture at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

The J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software is named in his honour.

Personal life

He married Heather Ware in 1945. They had a son.

See also

• Wilkinson matrix
• Wilkinson's polynomial

External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "James H. Wilkinson", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Wilkinson.html  .
• James H. Wilkinson, Turing's Work at the National Physical Laboratory and the Construction of Pilot ACE, DEUCE and ACE (in Nicholas Metropolis, J. Howlett, Gian-Carlo Rota, (editors), A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, Academic Press, New York, 1980)
• Photo of Wilkinson from Nick Higham's archive
• Fox, L. (December 1987). "James Hardy Wilkinson". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 33: 671–708. http://www.jstor.org/stable/769967. Retrieved 2008-07-23.  

From Wikiquote

It was not easy to have the imagination to foresee that computers were to become one of the most important developments of the century.

James Hardy Wilkinson (27 September 1919 – 5 October 1986) was a prominent figure in the field of numerical analysis, a field at the boundary of applied mathematics and computer science particularly useful to physics and engineering. He worked with Alan Turing at the National Physical Laboratory in the early days of the development of electronic computers (1946–1948). In 1970 he received the Turing Award "for his research in numerical analysis to facilitate the use of the high-speed digital computer, having received special recognition for his work in computations in linear algebra and 'backward' error analysis."

Sourced

Turing had a strong predeliction for working things out from first principles, usually in the first instance without consulting any previous work on the subject, and no doubt it was this habit which gave his work that characteristically original flavor.

• Very belatedly in 1947, Darwin [Sir Charles Darwin, great-grandson of the famous Charles Darwin] agreed to set up a very small electronics group [...] It was not easy to have the imagination to foresee that computers were to become one of the most important developments of the century.
  • Oral history interview by John C. Nash, SIAM History of Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing Project[1], 13 July 1984

Some Comments from a Numerical Analyst (1971)

1970 Turing Award lecture [2], Journal of the ACM 18:2 (February 1971), pp. 137–147

Of course everything in computerology is new; that is at once its attraction, and its weakness.

• Turing had a strong predeliction for working things out from first principles, usually in the first instance without consulting any previous work on the subject, and no doubt it was this habit which gave his work that characteristically original flavor. I was reminded of a remark which Beethoven is reputed to have made when he was asked if he had heard a certain work of Mozart which was attracting much attention. He replied that he had not, and added "neither shall I do so, lest I forfeit some of my own originality."

• He [Turing] was particularly fond of little programming tricks (some people would say that he was too fond of them to be a "good" programmer) and would chuckle with boyish good humor at any little tricks I may have used.

• Numerical analysis has begun to look a little square in the computer science setting, and numerical analysts are beginning to show signs of losing faith in themselves. Their sense of isolation is accentuated by the present trend towards abstraction in mathematics departments which makes for an uneasy relationship. How different things might have been if the computer revolution had taken place in the 19th century! [...] In any case "numerical analysts" may be likened to "The Establishment" in computer science and in all spheres it is fashionable to diagnose "rigor morris" in the Establishment.

• Of course everything in computerology is new; that is at once its attraction, and its weakness. Only recently I learned that computers are revolutionizing astrology. Horoscopes by computer!

• In the early days of the computer revolution computer designers and numerical analysts worked closely together and indeed were often the same people. Now there is a regrettable tendency for numerical analysts to opt out of any responsibility for the design of the arithmetic facilities and a failure to influence the more basic features of software. It is often said that the use of computers for scientific work represents a small part of the market and numerical analysts have resigned themselves to accepting facilities "designed" for other purposes and making the best of them. [...] One of the main virtues of an electronic computer from the point of view of the numerical analyst is its ability to "do arithmetic fast." Need the arithmetic be so bad!

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

James H. Wilkinson

• Turing Award citation