Andrew James Herbert,
OBE,
FREng
Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and Scholarship, fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in the UK a ...
(born 1954) is a British
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
, formerly Chairman of
Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...
, for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.
Biography
Herbert received a bachelor's of science degree in computational science from the
Leeds University
, mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased
, established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds
, ...
in 1975, and a PhD degree in computer science from
Cambridge University
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
in 1978 for his work on "A Microprogrammed Operating System Kernel".
In 1978 he started working at the
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
The Department of Computer Science and Technology, formerly the Computer Laboratory, is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. it employed 35 academic staff, 25 support staff, 35 affiliated research staff, and about 15 ...
as assistant lecturer under
Maurice Wilkes
Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes (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 who inv ...
and
Roger Needham
Roger Michael Needham (9 February 1935 – 1 March 2003) was a British computer scientist.
Early life and education
Needham was born in Birmingham, England, the only child of Phyllis Mary, ''née'' Baker (''c''.1904–1976) and Leonard Wil ...
in the Computer Laboratory, and worked with others on the "Cambridge Model Distributed System". In 1985 he left Cambridge to found his own contract research company (Architecture Projects Ltd – APM Ltd), which led projects to develop ANSA, the Advanced Network Systems Architecture. In 1996 he had founded another sister company called Digitivity to develop a product to enable the secure deployment of Java clients for business-to-business applications. Two years later he joined Citrix Systems Inc. following their acquisition of APM and Digitivity to become Director of Advanced Technology. In 2001 he joined Microsoft Research in Cambridge as an assistant director, and became managing director in April 2003. In 2010 he became chairman of Microsoft Research EMEA. He retired from Microsoft in September 2011.
Herbert is a Fellow of the
Royal Academy of Engineering
The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering.
The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senior ...
, a Fellow of the
British Computer Society
Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, known as the British Computer Society until 2009, is a professional body and a learned society that represents those working in infor ...
and a former
Liveryman of the City of London
Worshipful Company of Information Technologists
The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, also known as the Information Technologists' Company, is one of the livery companies of the City of London. The company was granted livery status by the Court of Aldermen on 7 January 1992, ...
. He is an Emeritus Fellow of
Wolfson College, Cambridge
Wolfson College () is a colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The majority of students at the college are postgraduate education, postgraduates. The college also a ...
and a member of
St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...
.
Herbert was appointed
Officer of the Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations,
and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...
(OBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours.
Outside of computing, Herbert's interests include flying and restoring vintage aircraft, computer conservation and building scale working models of steam railway locomotives. He owns and operates a 1953
DHC-1 Chipmunk and shares ownership and operation of a
DH87b Hornet Moth aircraft.
Now in retirement, Herbert is chairman of trustees for the
National Museum of Computing
The National Museum of Computing is a museum in the United Kingdom dedicated to collecting and restoring History of computing hardware, historic computer systems. The museum is based in rented premises at Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes, Bucki ...
at Bletchley Park. He is also the manager of a project to construct a working replica of the Cambridge
EDSAC
The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal ''First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the Universi ...
computer at the museum and it is hoped it will be operational some time in 2021.
He keeps a working 1967
Elliott 903 computer at his home.
Work
Herbert's research interests include
computer networking
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ma ...
,
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
s,
distributed computing
A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different computer network, networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by message passing, passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed com ...
,
programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language.
The description of a programming ...
s and large-scale
data driven systems. His most significant research achievements were an operating system for the Cambridge CAP Computer, his contributions to the Cambridge Model Distributed System and the Advanced Networked Systems Architecture.
Advanced Networked Systems Architecture
The Advanced Networked Systems Architecture (ANSA) was an applied research programme starting in the 1980s as part of the UK
Alvey
The Alvey Programme was a British government sponsored research programme in information technology that ran from 1984 to 1990. The programme was a reaction to the Japanese Fifth Generation project, which aimed to create a computer using massive ...
Programme. ANSA aimed to develop a
distributed systems
A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...
software architecture to support applications integration in enterprise-wide systems. The ANSA work included support for interactive multi-media services, object technology for
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
applications, distributed systems management, mobile object systems and security for electronic commerce. ANSA was an early example of what became known as 'middleware'.
In the 1990s "ANSAWare" software based on the ANSA architecture was used by many organisations ahead of the widespread availability of commercial,
CORBA
The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a standard defined by the Object Management Group (OMG) designed to facilitate the communication of systems that are deployed on diverse platforms. CORBA enables collaboration between sys ...
-based products for distributed computing. Notable successes included the NASA
Astrophysics Data System
The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned a ...
(ADS), a European radio pager system and the online customer service system for a major UK utility. As part of his ANSA work, Herbert played an active role in many standards and consortia for distributed computing including
TINA-C TINA-C stands for Telecommunication Information Networking Architecture Consortium. It was an attempt (started in 1992) by several actors in the telecommunication world to define, design and realize a software architecture for the telecommunication ...
,
RM-ODP
Reference Model of Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) is a reference model in computer science, which provides a co-ordinating framework for the standardization of open distributed processing (ODP). It supports distribution, interworking, plat ...
,
OSF DCE and
OMG CORBA.
Herbert created a Cambridge UK company, called Architecture Projects Management Ltd (APM), to employ the ANSA research team. As ANSA matured APM developed a parallel software consulting business to help companies adopt ANSA ideas and exploit ANSAware, CORBA and Internet technologies. A key development during this period was E2S, a smart card-based architecture for end-to-end secure business-to-business transactions. In 1996 APM spun out further business called Digitivity, with offices in Cambridge UK and Palo Alto, California, USA to develop an Internet browser security product. In 1998 APM and Digitivity were acquired by Citrix Systems of Ft Lauderdale, Florida, USA and Herbert took up the position of Director for Advanced Technologies where he remained until joining Microsoft in 2001.
Publications
Herbert published several books and articles,
Andrew Herbert
List of publications from the DBLP Bibliography Server. a selection:
* 1979. ''The Cambridge CAP Computer and Its Operating System''. With Maurice Wilkes
Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes (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 who inv ...
and Roger Needham
Roger Michael Needham (9 February 1935 – 1 March 2003) was a British computer scientist.
Early life and education
Needham was born in Birmingham, England, the only child of Phyllis Mary, ''née'' Baker (''c''.1904–1976) and Leonard Wil ...
(ed.)
* 1984. ''Cambridge distributed computing system''. With Roger Needham
Roger Michael Needham (9 February 1935 – 1 March 2003) was a British computer scientist.
Early life and education
Needham was born in Birmingham, England, the only child of Phyllis Mary, ''née'' Baker (''c''.1904–1976) and Leonard Wil ...
* 2004. ''Computer systems : theory, technology, and applications : a tribute to Roger Needham ''. With Karen Spärck Jones
Karen Sparck Jones is a computer science researcher and innovator who pioneered the search engine algorithm known as inverse document frequency (IDF). While many early information scientists and computer engineers were focused on developing progr ...
(ed.)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Herbert, Andrew
1954 births
Alumni of the University of Leeds
British computer scientists
Fellows of the British Computer Society
Fellows of Wolfson College, Cambridge
Living people
Members of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
Microsoft employees
Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge
Officers of the Order of the British Empire