Jack Howlett

CBE 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 ...

(30 August 1912 – 5 May 1999) was a British

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

and

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 ...

who was head of the

Atlas Computer Laboratory The Atlas Computer Laboratory on the Harwell, Oxfordshire campus shared by the Harwell Laboratory was one of the major computer laboratories in the world, which operated between 1961 and 1975 to provide a service to British scientists at a tim ...

for the duration of its existence.

Personal life and early career

He was educated at Stand Grammar School, Whitefield,

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

and read mathematics at

Manchester University , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

. He was awarded a PhD in 1944 for research on the Numerical Integration of Partial Differential Equations.http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acl/associates/permanent/howlett.htm quoting an article published in "Quest" in 1971 He worked with the research department of the LMS Railway from 1935 to 1940. He often described his relief when his calculations of the performance of a new braking system were tested successfully on a real steam locomotive complete with sceptical crew. During the war he worked in research establishments on numerical analysis, under experts including

Douglas Hartree Douglas Rayner Hartree (27 March 1897 – 12 February 1958) was an English mathematician and physicist most famous for the development of numerical analysis and its application to the Hartree–Fock equations of atomic physics and the c ...

, and using equipment such as early mechanical

differential analyzer The differential analyser is a mechanical analogue computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, using wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. It was one of the first advanced computing devices to be used operati ...

s. This was applied to various problems including the atomic bomb project code-named

Tube Alloys Tube Alloys was the research and development programme authorised by the United Kingdom, with participation from Canada, to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. Starting before the Manhattan Project in the United States, the Bri ...

.Obituary, ICL Systems Journal, vol 14 issue 1, 1999 In 1948 he became head of the Computing Section in Theoretical Physics Division, AERE Harwell. He worked on many of the early reactor projects. In 1966 he was elected Fellow of

St Cross College, Oxford St Cross College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1965, St Cross is an all-graduate college with gothic and traditional-style buildings on a central site in St Giles', just south of Pusey Street. It a ...

. He was a member of the

Institution of Electrical Engineers The Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) was a British professional organisation of electronics, electrical, manufacturing, and Information Technology professionals, especially electrical engineers. It began in 1871 as the Society of Te ...

, a Fellow of the

Royal Statistical Society The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) is an established statistical society. It has three main roles: a British learned society for statistics, a professional body for statisticians and a charity which promotes statistics for the public good. ...

and a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. He was appointed a

in the New Years Honours List of 1969. He was married to Joan, with whom he had five children. He enjoyed a wide range of musical and artistic activities, was a keen Scottish country dancer, took part in amateur dramatics, and enjoyed cycling and hill-walking. He was known to colleagues for his colourful dress sense and for his lively inquiring mind, extending well beyond narrow professional interests.

Atlas Computer Laboratory

He was appointed Director of the

in 1961, where he stayed until retirement in 1975. The Laboratory was created to provide a service to researchers across the United Kingdom with a need for large-scale computing power. Peter Hall, a Director of Ferranti and later ICL, described how Howlett did business: "I explained to Jack that to order an Atlas we needed a contract that committed them to over £3m for a machine which we could not specify in performance, reliability, or delivery date. Jack did his best to get a commitment from us, but all we could offer was 'best endeavours'. So Jack worked on the contracts people and we got a contract ... which depended totally on trust between Jack and the authority on the one hand, and Jack and Ferranti – essentially me – on the other. It all worked out. It enabled the Atlas Laboratory to get off the ground, and Ferranti to establish the Atlas computer in the market place."

Retirement

On retirement from the Atlas Laboratory, Howlett took up a post with ICL as founding editor of the ICL Technical Journal, a publication designed to give technical information about research and product innovation both inside the company and among its users and research partners. Peter Hall invited him to take this post in 1978Jack Howlett writing about his successor

John Pinkerton John Pinkerton (17 February 1758 – 10 March 1826) was a Scottish antiquarian, cartographer, author, numismatist, historian, and early advocate of Germanic racial supremacy theory. He was born in Edinburgh, as one of three sons to Ja ...

in th
ICL Technical Journal, vol 12 issue 2, p361
/ref> and he remained editor until 1990, thereafter continuing with an active role on the editorial board until his death; he thus had the unique distinction of receiving an ICL award for 21 years' service which only started at the age of 65. He ran the meetings of the editorial board efficiently in the relaxed atmosphere of his London club, always followed by good food, wine, and conversation. He co-authored a history of computing. He also undertook a number of translation projects in his retirement, for example translating books on

object-oriented language Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...

s and databases from French into English.Fractal Geometries Theory and Applications, Alain Le Mehaute, translator Jack Howlett. CRC, 1991,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Howlett, Jack 1912 births 1999 deaths International Computers Limited people Alumni of the University of Manchester 20th-century British mathematicians Numerical analysts Fellows of the Royal Statistical Society Fellows of St Cross College, Oxford Commanders of the Order of the British Empire People educated at Stand Grammar School