Frederic Calland Williams

Sir Frederic Calland Williams, CBE FRS[2][3] (26 June 1911 – 11 August 1977),[2][4] known as F.C. Williams or Freddie Williams,[5] was an English engineer, a pioneer in radar and computer technology.[6][7][8][9][10][11]

F.C. Williams

CBE FRS
Born
Frederic Calland Williams

(1911-06-26)26 June 1911
Stockport
Died11 August 1977(1977-08-11) (aged 66)
Manchester
NationalityEnglish
CitizenshipBritish
EducationStockport Grammar School
Alma mater
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
Institutions
ThesisProblems of spontaneous oscillation in electrical circuits (1936)
Doctoral studentsTom Kilburn[1]

Education

Williams was born in Stockport, and educated at Stockport Grammar School. He went on to the Victoria University of Manchester where he was awarded Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees. He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1936[12] when he was a postgraduate student of Magdalen College, Oxford.[13]

Research and career

Working at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE), he was a substantial contributor during World War II to the development of radar.[14]

In 1946 he was appointed as head of the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Manchester. There, with Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, he built the first electronic stored-program digital computer, the Manchester Baby.[14]

Williams is also recognised for his invention of the Williams tube, an early memory device.[14]

He died in Manchester, aged 66.

Awards and honours

Williams was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1950. His nomination reads

During the war F.C. Williams was the chief authority and the main source of ideas on the electrical circuits associated with many radar devices evolved at the Telecommunications Radio Establishment. Many of the extreme refinements of technique embodied in devices such as I.F.F., G.E.E. and Oboe, were due to him and were made possible by his deep knowledge of physical principles. Since the war he has developed successfully an electric storage tube for the proposed Manchester digital computing machine. The storage depends for its success on most delicate properties of wave form produced by electronic bombardment of a spot on a screen.[3]

References
  1. Kilburn, Tom (1948). A storage system for use with binary digital computing machines. manchester.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Manchester. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.488439.
  2. Kilburn, T.; Piggott, L. S. (1978). "Frederic Calland Williams. 26 June 1911-11 August 1977". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 24: 583–604. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1978.0020.
  3. "EC/1950/25 Williams, Sir Frederic Calland: Library and Archive Catalogue". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 8 July 2019.
  4. "Corrigenda: Frederic Calland Williams. 26 June 1911-11 August 1977". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 25: 0–1. 1979. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1979.0001.
  5. "Frederic Calland Williams (1911–1977)". Archived from the original on 7 January 2010.
  6. Williams, Frederic; Kilburn, Tom (1948). "Electronic Digital Computers". Nature. 162 (4117): 487. doi:10.1038/162487a0. Archived from the original on 6 April 2009.
  7. Anderson David, Delve Janet (2007) Frederic Calland Williams: the Manchester Baby's chief engineer IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 29 (4): 90-102
  8. Williams, F.C.; Kilburn, T. (1949). "A storage system for use with binary-digital computing machines". Proceedings of the IEE - Part II: Power Engineering. 96 (50): 183–200. doi:10.1049/pi-2.1949.0078.
  9. Anderson, D. P. (2009). "Interview An interview with Maurice Wilkes". Communications of the ACM. 52 (9): 39. doi:10.1145/1562164.1562180.
  10. Shelburne, B. J.; Burton, C. P. (1998). "Early programs on the Manchester Mark I Prototype". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 20 (3): 4. doi:10.1109/85.707570.
  11. Burton, C. (1998). "The Manchester baby reborn". IEE Review. 44 (3): 113–117. doi:10.1049/ir:19980302.
  12. Williams, Frederic Calland (1936). Problems of spontaneous oscillation in electrical circuits. solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.673482.
  13. "WILLIAMS, Prof. Sir Frederic (Calland)". Who's Who. 2017 (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. (subscription or UK public library membership required) (subscription required)
  14. Napper, Brian (October 2000). "Frederic Calland Williams (1911–1977)". University of Manchester. Retrieved 11 December 2015.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.