Les Hatton (born 5 February 1948) is a British-born

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 ...

and mathematician most notable for his work on failures and vulnerabilities in software controlled systems. He was educated at

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...

1967–1970 and the

University of Manchester , 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 ...

where he received a Master of Science degree in electrostatic waves in relativistic plasma and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1973 for his work on

computational fluid dynamics Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate th ...

in tornadoes. Although originally a geophysicist, a career for which he was awarded the 1987

Conrad Schlumberger Award The Conrad Schlumberger Award is an award given to one of the members of European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers. The award is given each year to one that has made an outstanding contribution over a period of time to the scientific and ...

for his work in

computational geophysics Computational geophysics is the field of study that uses any type of numerical computations to generate and analyze models of complex geophysical systems. It can be considered an extension, or sub-field, of both computational physics and geophysics. ...

, he switched careers in the early 1990s to study software and systems failure. He has published 4 books and over 100 refereed journal publicationshttps://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=les+hatton Les Hatton's publications in

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

and his theoretical and experimental work on software systems failure can be found in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering,

IEEE Computer ''Computer'' is an IEEE Computer Society practitioner-oriented magazine issued to all members of the society. It contains peer-reviewed articles, regular columns, and interviews on current computing-related issues. ''Computer'' provides informatio ...

IEEE Software ''IEEE Software'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed magazine and scientific journal published by the IEEE Computer Society covering all aspects of software engineering, processes, and practices. Its mission is to be the best source of reliable, useful ...

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

, and IEEE Computational Science and Engineering. His book ''Safer C'' pioneered the use of safer language subsets in commercial embedded control systems. He was also cited amongst the leading scholars of systems and software engineering by the Journal of Systems and Software for the period 1997–2001. Primarily a computer scientist nowadays, he retains wide interests and has published recently on artificial complexity in mobile phone charging, the aerodynamics of

javelins A javelin is a light spear designed primarily to be thrown, historically as a ranged weapon, but today predominantly for sport. The javelin is almost always thrown by hand, unlike the sling, bow, and crossbow, which launch projectiles with th ...

and novel bibliographic search algorithms for unstructured text to extract patterns from defect databases. After spending most of his career in industry working for Oakwood Computing Associates,Oakwood Computing Associates Ltd.
(Managing director) he is currently a professor of Forensic Software Engineering at Kingston University, London.

References

1948 births Living people Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Alumni of the University of Manchester Academics of Kingston University British computer scientists 20th-century British mathematicians 21st-century British mathematicians Place of birth missing (living people) {{UK-academic-bio-stub