Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes

Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes FRS FREng (26 June 1913 – 29 November 2010) was a British computer scientist who designed and helped build the Electronic delay storage automatic calculator (EDSAC), one of the earliest stored program computers and invented microprogramming, a method for using stored-program logic to operate the control unit of a central processing unit's circuits. At the time of his death, Wilkes was an Emeritus Professor of the University of Cambridge.

Awards, honours and leadership

• Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society,
• Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering,
• 1956 - Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS),
• Founder member of the British Computer Society (BCS) and its first president (1957–1960);
• 1967 - Turing Award,
• 1968 - Harry H. Goode Memorial Award,
• 1972 - Honorary Doctor of Science by Newcastle University.
• 1980 - Retired as the head of the Computer Laboratory and joined Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard, MA, USA,
• 1981 - Faraday Medal by the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
• The Maurice Wilkes Award, for an outstanding contribution to computer architecture made by a young computer scientist or engineer, is named after him.
• 1986 - Returned to England, and became a member of Olivetti's Research Strategy Board.
• 1987 - Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) by the University of Bath.
• 1993 - Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) by Cambridge University,
• 1994 - Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.
• 1997 - Mountbatten Medal,
• 2000 - Presented the inaugural Pinkerton Lecture.
• 2000 - Knighted in the New Years Honours List.
• 2001 - Fellow of the Computer History Museum
• 2002 - Emeritus Professor at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge.

Personal life

Wilkes married Nina Twyman in 1947 who died in 2008. He died in November 2010 and was survived by his son, Anthony, and two daughters, Margaret and Helen.