Where was Maurice Wilkes educated from 1930 to 1931?
Maurice Wilkes Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes ( 26 June 1913 – 29 November 2010 ) was a British computer scientist who designed and helped build the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator ( EDSAC ) , one of the earliest stored program computers , and who invented microprogramming , a method for using stored-program logic to operate the control unit of a central processing units circuits . At the time of his death , Wilkes was an Emeritus Professor of the University of Cambridge . Early life , education , and military service . Wilkes was born in Dudley , Worcestershire , England the only child of Ellen ( Helen ) , née Malone ( 1885–1968 ) and Vincent Joseph Wilkes ( 1887–1971 ) , an accounts clerk at the estate of the Earl of Dudley . He grew up in Stourbridge , West Midlands , and was educated at King Edward VI College , Stourbridge . During his school years he was introduced to amateur radio by his chemistry teacher . He studied the Mathematical Tripos at St Johns College , Cambridge from 1931–34 , and in 1936 completed his PhD in physics on the subject of radio propagation of very long radio waves in the ionosphere . 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 . He was called up for military service during World War II and worked on radar at the Telecommunications Research Establishment ( TRE ) , and in operational research . Research and career . Initiation into electronic computing . 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 . One day Leslie Comrie visited Wilkes and lent him a copy of John von Neumanns prepress description of the EDVAC , a successor to the ENIAC under construction by Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering . He had to read it overnight because he had to return it and no photocopying facilities existed . He decided immediately that the document described the logical design of future computing machines , and that he wanted to be involved in the design and construction of such machines . In August 1946 Wilkes travelled by ship to the United States to enroll in the Moore School Lectures , of which he was only able to attend the final two weeks because of various travel delays . During the five-day return voyage to England , Wilkes sketched out in some detail the logical structure of the machine which would become EDSAC . EDSAC . Since his laboratory had its own funding , he was immediately able to start work on a small practical machine , the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator ( EDSAC ) , once back at Cambridge . He decided that his mandate was not to invent a better computer , but simply to make one available to the university . Therefore , his approach was relentlessly practical . He used only proven methods for constructing each part of the computer . The resulting computer was slower and smaller than other planned contemporary computers . However , his laboratorys computer was the second practical stored program computer to be completed , and operated successfully from May 1949 , well over a year before the much larger and more complex EDVAC . In 1950 , along with David Wheeler , Wilkes used EDSAC to solve a differential equation relating to gene frequencies in a paper by Ronald Fisher . This represents the first use of a computer for a problem in the field of biology . Other computing developments . In 1951 , he developed the concept of microprogramming from the realisation that the central processing unit of a computer could be controlled by a miniature , highly specialised computer program in high-speed ROM . This concept greatly simplified CPU development . Microprogramming was first described at the University of Manchester Computer Inaugural Conference in 1951 , then expanded and published in IEEE Spectrum in 1955 . This concept was implemented for the first time in EDSAC 2 , which also used multiple identical bit slices to simplify design . Interchangeable , replaceable tube assemblies were used for each bit of the processor . The next computer for his laboratory was the Titan , a joint venture with Ferranti Ltd begun in 1963 . It eventually supported the UKs first time-sharing system and provided wider access to computing resources in the university , including time-shared graphics systems for mechanical CAD . A notable design feature of the Titans operating system was that it provided controlled access based on the identity of the program , as well as or instead of , the identity of the user . It introduced the password encryption system used later by Unix . Its programming system also had an early version control system . Wilkes is also credited with the idea of symbolic labels , macros and subroutine libraries . These are fundamental developments that made programming much easier and paved the way for high-level programming languages . Later , Wilkes worked on an early timesharing system ( now termed a multi-user operating system ) and distributed computing . Toward the end of the 1960s , Wilkes also became interested in capability-based computing , and the laboratory assembled a unique computer , the Cambridge CAP . In 1974 , Wilkes encountered a Swiss data network ( at Hasler AG ) that used a ring topology to allocate time on the network . The laboratory initially used a prototype to share peripherals . Eventually , commercial partnerships were formed , and similar technology became widely available in the UK . Awards , honours and leadership . Wilkes received a number of distinctions : he was a Knight Bachelor , Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society , a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Royal Society . Wilkes was a founder member of the British Computer Society ( BCS ) and its first president ( 1957–1960 ) . He received the Turing Award in 1967 , with the following citation : Professor Wilkes is best known as the builder and designer of the EDSAC , the first computer with an internally stored program . Built in 1949 , the EDSAC used a mercury delay line memory . He is also known as the author , with David Wheeler and Stanley Gill , of a volume on Preparation of Programs for Electronic Digital Computers in 1951 , in which program libraries were effectively introduced . In 1968 he received the Harry H . Goode Memorial Award , with the following citation : For his many original achievements in the computer field , both in engineering and software , and for his contributions to the growth of professional society activities and to international cooperation among computer professionals . In 1972 , Wilkes was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science by Newcastle University . In 1980 , he retired from his professorships and post as the head of the Computer Laboratory and joined the central engineering staff of Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard , Massachusetts , USA . Wilkes was awarded the Faraday Medal by the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1981 . The Maurice Wilkes Award , awarded annually for an outstanding contribution to computer architecture made by a young computer scientist or engineer , is named after him . In 1986 , he returned to England and became a member of Olivettis Research Strategy Board . In 1987 , he was awarded an Honorary Degree ( Doctor of Science ) by the University of Bath . In 1993 Wilkes was presented , by Cambridge University , with an honorary Doctor of Science degree . In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery . He was awarded the Mountbatten Medal in 1997 and in 2000 presented the inaugural Pinkerton Lecture . He was knighted in the 2000 New Years Honours List . In 2001 , he was inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum for his contributions to computer technology , including early machine design , microprogramming , and the Cambridge Ring network . In 2002 , Wilkes moved back to the Computer Laboratory , University of Cambridge , as an emeritus professor . In his memoirs Wilkes wrote : Personal life . Wilkes married Nina Twyman in 1947 who died in 2008 . He died in November 2010 and was survived by his son , Anthony , and two daughters , Margaret and Helen . Publications . - Oscillations of the Earths Atmosphere ( 1949 ) , Cambridge University Press - Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer ( 1951 ) , with D . J . Wheeler and S . Gill , Addison Wesley Press - Automatic Digital Computers ( 1956 ) , Methuen Publishing - A Short Introduction to Numerical Analysis ( 1966 ) , Cambridge University Press - Time-sharing Computer Systems ( 1968 ) , Macdonald - The Cambridge CAP Computer and its Operating System ( 1979 ) , with R . M . Needham , Elsevier - Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer ( 1985 ) , MIT Press - Computing Perspectives ( 1995 ) Morgan-Kauffman External links . - Oral history interview with David J . Wheeler , Charles Babbage Institute , University of Minnesota . Wheeler was a research student under Wilkes at the University Mathematical Laboratory at Cambridge from 1948–51 . Wheeler discusses the EDSAC project , the influence of EDSAC on the ILLIAC , the ORDVAC , and the IBM 701 computers , as well as visits to Cambridge by Douglas Hartree , Nelson Blackman ( of ONR ) , Peter Naur , Aad van Wijngarden , Arthur van der Poel , Friedrich Bauer , and Louis Couffignal . - Listen to an oral history interview with Maurice Wilkes – recorded in June 2010 for An Oral History of British Science at the British Library - An after-dinner talk by Maurice Wilkes at Kings College , Cambridge , about Alan Turing . Filmed on 1 October 1997 by Ian Pratt ( video )