Maurice Wilkes

Sir Maurice Wilkes played a leading role in the design of the Cambridge University EDSAC computer, one of the earliest stored program computers, in the late 1940s and in return for some funding for that project from J. Lyons & Co, allowed the Lyons team to use the EDSAC design as the basis for LEO I, cooperating with the LEO team and helping in the selection of J. Pinkerton as the chief LEO Engineer. 

He will be remembered as a good friend of LEO.

He also invented microprogramming, a method for using stored-program logic to operate the control unit of a central processing unit's circuits. 

Among many other awards and accolades, he was knighted in 2000.

At the time of his death, Wilkes was an Emeritus Professor of the University of Cambridge. He has an entry written by Malcolm Campbell-Kelly in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published 9 January 2004.

Obituaries to Sir Maurice Wilkes were published upon his death by:

Books Written by Maurice Wilkes :

• MacDonald Computer Monographs No. 5 - Time-Sharing Computer Systems
• Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer

Articles Written by Maurice Wilkes :

• The Thinking Behind EDSAC
• User-driven innovation: the world’s first business computer: review
• Business Innovation: Introduction of new methods into business operations
• John Pinkerton and Lyons Electronic Office
• John Pinkerton and Lyons Electronic Office

Magazine Articles Mentioning Maurice Wilkes :

• IEEE Annals of the History of Computing - April-June 2004

Historical Timeline for Maurice Wilkes :