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Latest - Decades: 1970s

Nicholas (Nic) Birtles

Nic Birtles left university after a boring year for more exciting work in the emerging IT industry.  He programmed a LEO machine; successor to the first business computer.  Like many who led the growth of the 20th century industry, he soon moved into sales and thence senior management with some of the iconic names of the early industry, including Burroughs in Canada and then ComShare, selling its computer power over telephone lines.

He was headhunted by Ingres, the innovative relational database competitor to Oracle.  He was in Silicon Valley for the dotcom boom and bust.  Since 2002, Nic has held a portfolio of non-executive roles with growth companies, most recently fundraising for an innovative aircraft design from Aeralis.  Nic is a Past Master of the City of London IT Livery Company (WCIT) , where he actively supports their charitable initiatives.

Professor Michael Mainelli

Professor Michael Mainelli’s life story is a fascinating journey from 1958 Seattle to Alderman and Sheriff of the City of London.  His Irish mother and Italian father came from lines of engineers and his experience spans computer scientist, accountant, and management consultant.  His education reflects expansive interests, including a Doctorate as a mature student, alongside his busy professional assignments. 

He established City think tank and venture firm Z/Yen in 1994 and Michael has advised on and managed a host of challenging projects, for a multitude of clients from the first complete digital map of the world; to the UK Ministry of Defence commercialising its £100M technology business; and setting up City indices. He recommends small teams to solve big problems and his mass of publications includes bestselling books.

Professor Edwin Candy

Professor Edwin Candy cut his teeth helping build command and control radio systems in his native Australia.  He worked for the Australian subsidiary of Pye, the Cambridge UK-based electronics company.  He spent a year seconded to Digital Equipment Corporation in the USA where he learned about computer architectures.   By the 1980s he was a business manager at Philips which had taken over Pye.  He moved to the UK in 1987 and conceived and created the Universal Mobile Telephone System 3G specification with 25 partners.  This standard was the basis for 3G mobile communications incorporating Internet services.

Professor Alan Bundy CBE

Professor Alan Richard Bundy, CBE, FRSE, FRS, FREng, FACM is Professor of Automated Reasoning in the School of Informatics at Edinburgh University.  Throughout his long and illustrious career he has worked mostly as a researcher in artificial intelligence, mathematical reasoning and representations of knowledge.  Alan helped set up the UK Computing Research Committee and has been the Vice-President of the British Computer Society, among many other contributions to important bodies.

Cyril Hilsum CBE

Cyril Hilsum is a British physicist and material scientist, who carried out research on infra-red devices and semi-conductors, and played a key role in the development of flat-panel liquid crystal displays. He was awarded numerous prizes from several institutions: he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and an honorary member of the American National Academy of Engineering. He was awarded the Max Born Prize in 1987 and the Faraday Medal in 1988. He was awarded the CBE in 1990 for services to the Electrical and Electronics Industry. In 2007 he was awarded the Royal Society’s Royal Medal for his many outstanding contributions and for continuing to use his prodigious talents on behalf of industry, government and academia to this day

Paul Fullagar

Paul Fullagar says he has been a user of IT rather than a developer of IT but he has written applications and run companies developing and selling packages mostly in the financial sector. He qualified in business studies and as a chartered management accountant. He has written applications in Algol and Fortran IV. He has helped several ailing software package companies to recover through looking at their overall position with helicopter vision. He is a business angel in many software and healthcare companies.

Professor Brian Collins CB

Professor Brian Collins CB spent his career in the public service, in the private sector and as an academic.  He met his first computer programming the speed of nuclear bomb blasts and went on to work at the defence research establishment at Malvern.  He devised night goggles and tank night-time battle systems.  At the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) he helped re-orientate it to the new role after the cold war.  Working in the private sector he amalgamated the IT systems of the world’s largest legal firm.  He worked on integrating technology to government policy and then transferred to academia.

Alastair Macdonald CB

Alastair Macdonald CB spent 32 years as a civil servant working on advice to ministers and executing policy for the IT industry. He was the civil servant in charge of the IT82 awareness campaign initiated by Lord Ken Baker. Macdonald was in charge of the privatisation of BT, a world first which started the liberalisation of the telecommunications industry. He was in charge of the Y2K efforts to avoid a catastrophe with the change of date at the start of this century. He took part in the decisions to widen the offering of mobile phone networks in the UK from two to four vendors.

Sir Frederick Crawford

Sir Frederick Crawford has a maxim which has stood him in good stead in his long career in industry and academia: never be seen moving.  He says he is like the sweeper in the game of curling: not touching the stone but influencing where it stops by sweeping in front of it.  His career has spanned four continents: Europe in the UK and France; the USA in Stamford University; and Japan and Australia where he was a visiting professor.  From 1980 to 1996 he was vice chancellor of Aston University, raising it from the bottom rung of UK universities into the top third.  He also opened the first science park in the UK.  He has never been a computer scientist nor a developer of IT but a user: IT is the servant, he says. 

Robert (Bob) Kowalski

Robert Anthony Kowalski is a logician and computer scientist, a distinguished Research Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Computational Logic in the Department of Computing at Imperial College, London.  He was elected a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in 1991, a Fellow of the European Co-ordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence in 1999, and a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 2000.  He received the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence in 2011.  He received the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Award for Eminent Scientists for 2012-2014.