Difference between revisions 13730171 and 16610828 on enwikiThe category of '''computer pioneers''' includes people whose contributions in the theoretical, technical and/or commercial fields of computing are outstanding and highly significant in the further development of computer-related disciplines.
[[Category:Computer specialists]]
[[Category:History of computing]]
[[Category:Computer professionals]]
[[Category:Pioneers by field]]
[[Category:Computer science|Pioneers]]
[[de:Pioniere der Informatik]]⏎
'''Dr. Trevor Pearcey'''
Obituary Written by Professor Peter Thorne of the University of Melbourne (February 1998)
"Dr Trevor Pearcey, who died on Tuesday 27 January, pioneered computing in Australia. Born in the United Kingdom, he graduated in 1940 from Imperial College with first class honours in physics and mathematics. He terminated his Ph.D. studies because of the war and joined the Air Defence Research Development Establishment.
Late in 1945, Pearcey came to Australia to work at the Radiophysics Division of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
In 1948 he, with Maston Beard, commenced the design of a stored program electronic computer. This machine, the CSIR Mark I, was developed largely independently of work then underway in Britain and the US.
The Mark I ran its first program in November 1949. It was almost certainly the fourth stored-program electronic computer in the world and the first outside Britain and the US (see history). The MkI was transferred to the University of Melbourne in 1955 and renamed CSIRAC.
CSIRAC was the first computer in an Australian University and the first in Victoria. It provided a computing service to scientists, engineers and the Melbourne business community until 1964. CSIRAC still exists intact, making it the oldest surviving electronic computer in the world.
It was a matter of regret to Pearcey that Australia did not capitalise on these early successes. However, CSIRAC played a major role as a training ground for many of the men and women who were to lead the computer revolution in Australia.
Pearcey participated in the design of several other notable Australian-designed and constructed computers. He was the original architect of the CSIRO computing facility of the ‘60s, leading to the establishment of the CSIRO Division of Computing Research and the nationwide CSIRONET system.
After a brief period with Control Data Corporation, Dr Pearcey became the first Dean of Computing at Caulfield Institute of Technology (later Chisholm Institute and now a campus of Monash University).
Apart from his pioneering work with computers, Trevor Pearcey was a prodigious publisher of scholarly papers. His interests included work in radio propagation, physical optics, scheduling of air traffic, crystallography, viscous flow and classes of non-linear systems that exhibit what is now referred to as chaos. His collected works for the D.Sc. awarded to him by the University of Melbourne in 1971, comprise three volumes of telephone-book thickness, totaling almost 1800 pages.
Among these papers is an article, published in the Australian Journal of Science in February 1948, which may be considered prescient. Pearcey wrote;
“…in the non-mathematical field there is wide scope for the use of the techniques in such things as filing systems. It is not inconceivable that an automatic encyclopaedic service operated through the national teleprinter or telephone system, will one day exist.”
This was written long before the CSIR MkI, databases, the Internet and the World Wide Web.
In recent years Dr Pearcey lived on the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne. He has kept in touch by Email with colleagues and friends (particularly those who are documenting Australia’s early achievements in computing). It is fitting that he has been able to do this by means of the technology that he pioneered."
Professor '''John Makepeace Bennett''' is an outstanding pioneer in computing; in 1949 he
was one of the developers of EDSAC, (which was the first stored program computer in the world in regular use) under the tutelage of Professor Maurice Wilkes at Cambridge University.
John had completed his first engineering degree in Brisbane in 1941. He
spent the years 1942-46 as a radar officer in the RAAF and returned to
complete two further engineering degrees after WWII. While on the staff of
the Brisbane City Electric Light Company he ws given the job of predicting
electrical load flows armed with a desk calculator. By chance he had heard
about the ACE computer being developed by the National Physical Laboratory
in London so he applied for a research studentship to work on this project;
the outcome was the job on EDSAC.
After three years at Cambridge Bennett was recruited by Ferranti Limited to
work on the Ferranti MK1, the first stored program machine to be built by
industry. His job was to build up a group to program likely user
applications and to recommend changes to the MKL1's architecture to make
programming easier.
In 1955 John returned to Australia as the country's first computer science
professor at the Basser Computer Laboratory at Sydney University.
In Sydney John Bennett's career (until his retirement) in 1987 covers a wide
variety of academic and industry contributions including the construction of
SILLIAC, international activities with IFILP and work with the Australian
Computer Society of which he was the Foundation President.
The following (incomplete) CV provides some of the details of his remarkable
career and contributions to the Australian computer scene.
Emeritus Professor and Honorary Associate, University of Sydney since 1987.
Born: 31 July, 1921, Warwick, Queensland
Academic Qualifications: BE(Civil), BE(Mech&Elec), BSc (Queensland),
PhD(Camb)
War Service: RAAF Ground Radar Officer (1942-46)
Career:
1986-93 Director Comfax Int'l P/L
1986-90 Director, Knowledge Engineering P/L
1961-86 Professor of Computing Science,
University of Sydney
1980-84, 1976-77 Fellow, Senate, University of Sydney
1980- Governor ICCC
1988-92 Sec. Gen. ICCC
1989-91 Chair, ATS NSW Div
1977- ACS Life Member
1977-78 Pres. Univ. Syd. Assn. Profs.
1975-77 Vice Pres. IFIP
1969-74 Chairman, Univ. Syd. Appointments Board
1970- Served as a member of program and
organising committees of 13 international
computer cos.
1982-83 Expert Advisor to the Review of Customs
Admin. and Procedures
1977 Expert Advisor on Scientilfic and
Technical Computing to ASTEC
1973-74 Member Aust. Gov. Committee on Privacy
1973-74 Member Aust. Gov. Committee on
Computerisation of Legal Data
1966-67 Foundation President ACS
1965-66 Pres. NSW Comp. Soc.
1964-65 Pres. Syd. Assoc. of Univ. Teachers
1959-63 Foundation Chairman, ANCAAC
1956-71 Senior Numerical Analyst
1950-55 Computer specialist, Ferranti Ltd (UK)
Awards:
1992 ICCC Founders AWARD
1991- Patron, Univ. Syd. Research Foundation
for Information Technology
1987- Hon. Life Member Syd. University Club
1984 ANCAAC Medal
1983 Officer, Order of Australia
1981 ACS Chips Award
1977 Silver Core Award
1981 Fulbright Award
1977 IFIP Silver Core Award
2001 Pearcey Hall of fame
2004 Pearcey National Medal for outstanding lifetime achievement
Publications:
Over 100 papers on various aspects of information technology
This site is not affiliated with or endorsed in any way by the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its affiliates. In fact, we fucking despise them.
|
