David Wheeler (British computer scientist)
| David Wheeler | |
|---|---|
| Born | David John Wheeler 9 February 1927 Birmingham, England |
| Died | 13 December 2004 (aged 77) |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | Computer Science |
| Institutions |
University of Cambridge Computer Lab, Cambridge Darwin College, Cambridge |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge (BA, PhD) |
| Thesis | Automatic Computing With EDSAC (1951) |
| Doctoral advisor | Maurice Wilkes |
| Doctoral students | |
| Known for |
Burrows–Wheeler transform Tiny Encryption Algorithm (TEA) Wheeler Jump WAKE (cipher) EDSAC |
| Notable awards |
Fellow of the Royal Society (1981) Computer Pioneer Award (1985) |
David John Wheeler FRS (9 February 1927 – 13 December 2004) was a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge.
Wheeler was born in Birmingham and gained a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge to read the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos, graduating in 1948. He completed the world's first PhD in computer science in 1951.
Wheeler's contributions to the field included work on the Electronic delay storage automatic calculator (EDSAC) and the Burrows–Wheeler transform. Along with Maurice Wilkes and Stanley Gill he is credited with the invention of the subroutine (which they referred to as the closed subroutine), and gave the first explanation of how to design software libraries; as a result, the jump to subroutine instruction was often called a Wheeler Jump. He was responsible for the implementation of the CAP computer, the first to be based on security capabilities. In cryptography, he was the designer of WAKE and the co-designer of the TEA and XTEA encryption algorithms together with Roger Needham. In 1950, along with Maurice Wilkes, he used EDSAC to solve a differential equation relating to gene frequencies in a paper by Ronald Fisher. This represents the first use of a computer for a problem in the field of biology.
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