Biography

My career falls into three main areas: 13 years at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), 20 years in the computing service here at Surrey, and the remaining years (since 1998) as a part time academic member of staff here in Surrey's Department of Computing.

I joined Maths Division of NPL in 1965 at the end of its great pioneering days in computing.  ACE (Automatic Computing Engine of Alan Turing fame - the man himself had died several years before I arrived at NPL) was still operating although his Pilot ACE had already been sent from NPL to the Science Museum. On my first day I had little feeling for how close I was to the history of Computing. I probably only fully appreciated that years later upon leaving NPL: I then looked back and saw how I had been working amongst colleagues with internationally recognised contributions to the development of computers, some having worked with the great Alan Turing himself - they could even talk about his personality! 

My first seven years at NPL were spent working with computer models of physical and atomic systems: this often involved writing computer solutions of eigenvalue problems (arising out of quantum theory) or writing software for graphical displays - in those days it was usual to write the software you required yourself.  For my remaining six years at NPL I moved towards Numerical Analysis contributing with colleagues to work in the fields of Numerical Optimisation, Quadrature and Fast Fourier Transforms: the products of such work were usually disseminated through the NAG Library which continues to be in general use amongst hundreds of Universities and research organisations or through NPL's own algorithms library

In 1978 I left NPL to join the computing service here at Surrey - the department which (after many changes over the years) has now emerged as IT Services. During my twenty years in this post I had various roles at various (increasing) levels: e.g. provision of advisory and applications support, teaching, Information and Training Manager. I always particularly enjoyed the teaching role which I managed to keep going in one form or another alongside my other duties throughout most of my twenty years in the post. Such teaching included: training of students and staff in the use of computing facilities, service teaching at degree level for academic departments and participation in the teaching of various external courses offered by the University. However, the computing service underwent a major reorganisation in 1998 and abandoned (most of) its teaching activities.

Following the reorganisation, I accepted an early retirement deal, but soon rejoined the University in my present post which is as part time tutor in the Department of Computing. Here I currently teach the Java and Algorithms modules on the BSc degree programs. I enjoy this immensely.

Research Interests

Research is not part of my teaching-only post. 

Research Collaborations

Not relevant.

Publications

As a part-time tutor publishing via journals is not relevant to my current post at the University. 

My past work has been disseminated via NPL (an other) reports or via algorithms libraries. 

Teaching

Programming Languages 1 (COM1002)

Programming Languages 2 (COM1004)

Algorithms and Data Structures (COM2006)

Departmental Duties

As a part time member of staff my duties are restricted to teaching on undergraduate computing modules.

Affiliations

Not relevant.