Ralph Anthony Brooker (22 September 1925 – 20 November 2019),
was a British
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 (a ...
known for developing the
Mark 1 Autocode.
He was educated at
Emanuel School
Emanuel School is an independent, co-educational day school in Battersea, south-west London. The school was founded in 1594 by Anne Sackville, Lady Dacre and Queen Elizabeth I and occupies a 12-acre (4.9 ha) site close to Clapham Junction ra ...
and graduated in
Mathematics from
Imperial College
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 ...
in 1945 and returned there in 1947 as assistant lecturer. His first computer project was the construction of a fast multiplier unit from electro-mechanical relays. This was taken over by Sid Michaelson and
K. D. Tocher and incorporated into ICCE, the Imperial College Computing Engine based on the same technology. By then (1949)Brooker had moved to the
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory to work for
Maurice Wilkes
Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes (26 June 1913 – 29 November 2010) was a British computer scientist who designed and helped build the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), one of the earliest stored program computers, and who in ...
on
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
development for
EDSAC
The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal ''First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the Universi ...
.
In October 1951 Brooker joined the
Computing Machine Laboratory 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 Unive ...
, where he took over from
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 ...
the task of writing programming manuals and running a user service on the
Ferranti Mark 1
The Ferranti Mark 1, also known as the Manchester Electronic Computer in its sales literature, and thus sometimes called the Manchester Ferranti, was produced by British electrical engineering firm Ferranti Ltd. It was the world's first commer ...
computer. It was his experience with the rather tedious Manchester machine-coding conventions that led him to devise what was probably the world's first publicly available
High-Level Language
In computer science, a high-level programming language is a programming language with strong abstraction from the details of the computer. In contrast to low-level programming languages, it may use natural language ''elements'', be easier to use, ...
. This was the
Mark 1 Autocode available from March 1954 and therefore about two years ahead of the first
Fortran compiler
In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...
.
Throughout the 1950s Brooker led a group at Manchester working on the theoretical underpinnings of compilers. This culminated in the
compiler-compiler
In computer science, a compiler-compiler or compiler generator is a programming tool that creates a parser, interpreter, or compiler from some form of formal description of a programming language and machine.
The most common type of compiler ...
, a seminal idea first presented at a British Computer Society Conference in July 1960 by Brooker and Derrick Morris. This was subsequently implemented on the
Ferranti
Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
The firm was known ...
ATLAS and used for high-level language development. The ATLAS was regarded as the world's most powerful computer when it was brought into service in December 1962.
In the mid-1960s Brooker helped to inaugurate the UK's first Computer Science degree course at Manchester. He moved to
Essex University
The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Es ...
in 1967 to take up the university's founding Chair of Computer Science. The first Essex Computer Science graduates obtained their degrees in the summer of 1970. He retired in 1988 and died on 20 November 2019 in Hexham.
Further reading
*
References
External links
* https://web.archive.org/web/20080816195357/http://hopl.murdoch.edu.au/showperson.prx?PeopleID=115
* http://www.computer50.org/mark1/gac1.html#brooker
* https://web.archive.org/web/20041031031946/http://www.computer50.org/mark1/gethomas/manchester_autocodes.html
Listen to an oral history interview with Tony Brooker- a life story interview recorded fo
An Oral History of British Scienceat the British Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brooker, Tony
1925 births
2019 deaths
British computer scientists
Alumni of Imperial College London
People from Fulham