born Aug. 11, 1921, Dewsbury, Yorkshire, Eng.
died Jan. 17, 2001, Manchester
British computer scientist.
His book A Storage System for Use with Binary Digital Computing Machines (1947) influenced several U.S. and Russian organizations to adopt his techniques. With Frederic C. Williams (1911–77) he designed and built the Manchester Mark I (1949), the first stored-program computer, which led to the first commercial computer, the Ferranti Mark I (1949). In 1964 he formed Britain's first university computer science department and became its first professor. See also stored-program concept .