John Hugh Westcott FRS,

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 ...

, Hon FIEE (3 November 1920 – 10 October 2014) was a British scientist specialising in

control systems A control system manages, commands, directs, or regulates the behavior of other devices or systems using control loops. It can range from a single home heating controller using a thermostat controlling a domestic boiler to large industrial c ...

and Professor of Computing and Automation at

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

Career

Westcott was educated at Wandsworth Grammar School, the

City and Guilds College The Faculty of Engineering is the engineering school of Imperial College London, and one of the three main faculties the college. It was formed in 2001 from the former City and Guilds College and the Royal School of Mines—two of the three o ...

, both in London, and the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. His career began in

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, we ...

research during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. After a year in Germany with the Allied Commission, he obtained a scholarship to the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

where many scientists returning from the services were addressing the early possibilities of computer applications. He was the first to lecture on the new field of cybernetics in Britain and was a member of the

Ratio Club The Ratio Club was a small British informal dining club from 1949 to 1958 of young psychiatrists, psychologists, physiologists, mathematicians and engineers who met to discuss issues in cybernetics., p. 95. History The idea of the club arose ...

with Grey Walter,

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical co ...

Giles Brindley Giles Skey Brindley FRS (born April 30, 1926), is a British physiologist, musicologist and composer, known for his contributions to the physiology of the retina and colour vision, and treatment of erectile dysfunction. Medical career Brindley is ...

and others from various fields, who met between 1949 and 1952 to discuss brain mechanisms and related issues.The origins of British cybernetics: the Ratio Club
/ref> He researched servo-mechanisms at

, where he headed the new Department of Computing and Control from 1966. A founder-member in 1957 of the

International Federation of Automatic Control The International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), founded in September 1957, is a multinational federation of 49 national member organizations (NMO), each one representing the engineering and scientific societies concerned with automatic c ...

, one of the first professional bodies to liaise successfully across the Iron Curtain, he was a consultant to companies such as

Shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

, ICI,

Westlands Westlands is an affluent, mixed-use commercial and residential neighbourhood in Nairobi. Location Westlands is located approximately , by road, northwest of the central business district of Nairobi. The geographical coordinates of the neighb ...

and

British Steel Corporation British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

in applying control systems to large and complex processes. In the 1970s and 1980s he also worked on macro-economic modelling and computer modelling for policy-evaluation.

Awards and honours

Westcott was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1983 and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 1980.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Westcott, John 1920 births 2014 deaths Academics of Imperial College London British computer scientists Fellows of the Royal Society British expatriates in the United States