| Audrey Bates | |
|---|---|
| Born | Margery Audrey Bates 1928 |
| Died | 2014 (aged 85–86) |
| Alma mater | University of Manchester |
Margery Audrey Bates (Clayton Wallis) (1928–2014) was a British-American computer programmer who, in 1948, wrote the earliest program for lambda calculus calculations on the Manchester Mark I computer.
Career
Bates graduated with a First in Mathematics from University of Manchester in the summer of 1949. She was taken on as a research student by Alan Turing, and shared an office with him and Cicely Popplewell. In 1950 Bates submitted an MSc thesis entitled "The mechanical solution of a problem in Church's Lambda calculus". This thesis documents a successful attempt to carry out higher-order logical reasoning on the extremely primitive Manchester Mark I electronic computer.
When the Manchester Mark I was commercialised by the local electronics firm Ferranti, Bates moved to work with them as a programmer. Whilst at Ferranti she composed several sections (some uncredited) of Vivian Bowdon's Faster Than Thought, a popular introduction to electronic computing.
In 1952, Bates went to work on the FERUT, the Ferranti Mark I installed at the University of Toronto. In 1955, Bates was pictured supervising the FERUT when it carried out the first automated remote access to a computer.
In 1979, Bates was working as a 'futurist' at a US military think tank.
Personal life
Bates married twice and had four children. Her first husband, Ken Wallis, was a fellow Ferranti programmer; her second husband was Leigh Clayton (1927–2024) and it was under the name of Clayton that Bates published her later work.
References
- ^ "Birth and death dates for Marjorie Audrey Bates/Wallis". ancestry.co.uk.
- ^ Swinton, Jonathan (2019). Alan Turing's Manchester. Manchester: Manchester: Infang Publishing. pp. p119. ISBN 978-0-9931789-2-4.
- ^ Andrew, Hodges (2014). The Alan Turing : the enigma. London. ISBN 9781784700089. OCLC 890394618.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Bates, Audrey (1950). The mechanical solution of a problem in Church's Lambda calculus (Thesis). University of Manchester.
- Bowdon (1953). Faster Than Thought. Pitman.
- Pedwell, Susan (2013). "Paving the Way for the Information Highway".
- ^ "Women at the console". Alan Turing's Manchester. Retrieved 2021-01-18.
- "DTIC ADA083756: An Assessment of the Influence of Emerging Social and Economic Trends on the People and Management of the Coast Guard. Volume II". December 1979.
- Lavington, Simon, Stardust: tales from the early days of computing. Talk to the Computer Conservation Society, Manchester, 19 February 2019.