James H. Wilkinson
Jim Wilkinson | |
|---|---|
| File:James H. Wilkinson.jpg Jim Wilkinson with his Turing Award | |
| Born | James Hardy Wilkinson 27 September 1919 Strood, England |
| Died | 5 October 1986 (aged 67) Teddington, England |
| Education | Trinity College, Cambridge (BA) |
| Known for | |
| Awards |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Numerical Analysis Numerical linear algebra |
| Institutions | National Physical Laboratory[2] |
James Hardy Wilkinson FRS[1] (27 September 1919 – 5 October 1986) was a prominent figure in the field of numerical analysis, a field at the boundary of applied mathematics and computer science particularly useful to physics and engineering.[3][4][5] In 1970 he won the ACM Turing Award.
Education
[edit | edit source]Born in Strood, England, he won a Foundation Scholarship to Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School in Rochester.[6] He studied the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated as Senior Wrangler.[7]
Career
[edit | edit source]Taking up war work in 1940, he began working on ballistics but transferred to the National Physical Laboratory[2] in 1946, where he worked with Alan Turing on the ACE[8] computer project. Later, Wilkinson's interests took him into the numerical analysis field, where he discovered many significant algorithms.
Awards and honours
[edit | edit source]Wilkinson received the Turing Award in 1970 "for his research in numerical analysis to facilitate the use of the high-speed digital computer, having received special recognition for his work in computations in linear algebra and 'backward' error analysis." In the same year, he also gave the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) John von Neumann Lecture.
Wilkinson also received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1973.[9]
He was elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society in 1974 for his pioneering work in computer science.
The James H. Wilkinson Prize in Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, established in 1982 by SIAM, and J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software, established in 1991, are named in his honour.
In 1987, Wilkinson won the Chauvenet Prize of the Mathematical Association of America, for his paper "The Perfidious Polynomial".[10]
Personal life
[edit | edit source]Wilkinson married Heather Ware in 1945. He died at home of a heart attack on 5 October 1986. His wife and their son survived him, a daughter having predeceased him.
Selected works
[edit | edit source]- Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).. (REAP)
- Reprinted from SIAM in 2023, ISBN 978-1-61197-751-6.
- Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). (AEP)
- with Christian Reinsch: Handbook for Automatic Computation, Volume II, Linear Algebra, Springer-Verlag, 1971
- The Perfidious Polynomial. In: Studies in Numerical Analysis, pp. 1–28, MAA Stud. Math., 24, Math. Assoc. America, Washington, DC, 1984
See also
[edit | edit source]References
[edit | edit source]- ^ a b Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ a b Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ James H. Wilkinson author profile page at the ACM Digital Library
- ^ James Hardy Wilkinson at DBLP Bibliography ServerLua error in Module:EditAtWikidata at line 29: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ "Easily at the top of the First Class", from the MacTutor biography.
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
External links
[edit | edit source]
- Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value). Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- "An interview with James H. Wilkinson", Conducted by J. C. Nash on 13 July, 1984
- Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
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- 1919 births
- 1986 deaths
- 20th-century English mathematicians
- British computer scientists
- Turing Award laureates
- Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
- Fellows of the British Computer Society
- Fellows of the Royal Society
- People from Strood
- People educated at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School
- Senior Wranglers
- Numerical analysts
- Scientists of the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)