(Cambridge EDSAC) MA, PhD, FRS
1913–2010
Role: Head of the Cambridge University Mathematical Laboratory
Responsibility: Led design of Cambridge University EDSAC Computer, which began to work in May 1949
Encouraged by Douglas Hartree, Professor Sir Maurice Wilkes played a key role in the design of the Cambridge University EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) machine, which incorporated the latest ideas on computer structure (the von Neumann architecture).
He allowed the Lyons team to use the EDSAC design as the basis for LEO, and helped select John Pinkerton, who he knew from Cambridge, as the chief LEO engineer. Wilkes offered the EDSAC design in exchange for funding and cooperation with the LEO team, and went on to drive computing innovations in everything from microprogramming to cache memory.
Biographies – The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Centre of Computing History, University of Cambridge