Record

Authorised form of nameWheeler; David John (1927 - 2004)
Dates1927 - 2004
NationalityBritish
Place of birthBirmingham, Warwickshire, England
Date of birth09/02/1927
Place of deathCambridge
Date of death13/12/2004
OccupationComputer scientist, inventor of the 'closed subroutine'
ActivityEducation:
Edward VI Camp Hill Grammar School, Birmingham; Hanley High School, Stoke on Trent; Trinity College, Cambridge; Research Student, Mathematical Laboratory, Cambridge, PhD (1951)
Career:
Research Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge (1951-1957), worked on Edsac (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer); Visiting assistant professor, Illinois University (1951-1953) working on Ordvac (Ordnance Discrete Variable Automatic Computer); Assistant Director of Research, Mathematical Laboratory, Cambridge University (1955-1966), working on Titan computer, Reader in Computer Science (1966-1978), Professor of Computer Science (1978-1994, Emeritus); Univeristy of California, Berkeley (1966); Fellow, Darwin College, Cambridge (1967-1994, Emeritus); consultant for Bell Labs (worked for them in 1968) and Digital Equipment Corporation where he worked with Mike Burrows to devise the Burrows-Wheeler Compression Algorithm; invented with Roger Needham cryptography technique called Tea (Tiny Encryption Algorithm); Fellow, British Computing Society (1970); Pioneer Medal "for assembly language programming", Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers; Fellow of the Computer History Museum (October 2003)
Membership categoryFellow
Date of election19/03/1981
Age at election54
RelationshipsSon of Arthur and Agnes Wheeler; married (1957) Joyce Blackler
SourceObituaries:
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 2006 vol 52 pp 437-453, plate, by Martin Campbell-Kelly
Virtual International Authority Filehttp://viaf.org/viaf/71446271
CodeNA4849
Archives associated with this Fellow
RefNoTitleDate
IM/GA/JGRS/8253Wheeler, David John1981
EC/1981/40Wheeler, David John: certificate of election to the Royal Society1978
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