Rosemary Candlin (10 April 1927 – 10 April 2025) was an English crystallographer and computer scientist who joined the University of Edinburgh Computer Science Department shortly after it was first established, and for some time was the only woman lecturer on the staff. She worked there from 1968 to 1995, helped design the curriculum in its early years, and developed a specialist interest in

parallel programming Parallel computing is a type of computing, computation in which many calculations or Process (computing), processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. ...

. She then went on to work for

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

: the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Career

Candlin studied physics as an undergraduate at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

, and continued her studies at the university with a PhD in

crystallography Crystallography is the branch of science devoted to the study of molecular and crystalline structure and properties. The word ''crystallography'' is derived from the Ancient Greek word (; "clear ice, rock-crystal"), and (; "to write"). In J ...

. She had a succession of jobs in crystallography: at the

Natural History Museum, London The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum (Lo ...

, at

Princeton Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the Unit ...

, then back to the University of Cambridge as a research assistant to

Helen Megaw Helen Dick Megaw (1 June 1907 – 26 February 2002) was an Irish crystallographer who was a pioneer in X-ray crystallography. She made measurements of the cell dimensions of ice and established the Perovskite crystal structure. Education and ...

. She moved to the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

, and continued working in crystallography there, using a distant

Atlas computer The Atlas was one of the world's first supercomputers, in use from 1962 (when it was claimed to be the most powerful computer in the world) to 1972. Atlas's capacity promoted the saying that when it went offline, half of the United Kingdom's c ...

linked to the university by a telephone line. She went on to take up a position at the university's Computer Science Department which had been recently established by Professor Sidney Michaelson

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...

, who wanted her to teach first-year students how to program. Initially there were no other permanent women lecturers. Candlin moved on to teach more advanced students, designed courses on real-time programming, and also on

which became her speciality. After leaving the University of Edinburgh in 1995 she worked on physics software for

. This work involved

ATLAS An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of world map, maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditio ...

software.ATLAS Offline Computing Review

Personal life and death

Candlin was born Rosemary Shaw in

Plymouth Plymouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Devon, South West England. It is located on Devon's south coast between the rivers River Plym, Plym and River Tamar, Tamar, about southwest of Exeter and ...

in 1927, the only child of Eileen Shaw and Instructor Captain Robert Edward Shaw

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

ADC RN.''The Times'', 6 Sep, 1955, p1 As a result of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

the family had to move house several times, and Candlin's schooling was disrupted. She finished her secondary education in Liverpool. In 1955 she married the physicist David Candlin. Candlin died in Edinburgh on 10 April 2025, her 98th birthday.

Publications

*Posie Project Annual Report, University of Edinburgh Department of Computer Science 1988 *A Modelling System for Process-based Programs, ''Proceedings of the European Simulation Congress 1989'' *The Investigation of Communications Patterns in Occam, Developing Transputer Applications: OUG-11: ''Proceedings of the 11th Occam User Group Technical Meeting, 25–26 September 1989, Edinburgh, Scotland'' Vol. 11. IOS Press 1989. *A Statistical Approach to Finding Performance Models of Parallel Programs, in: Hillston, King, Pooley eds., ''7th UK Computer and Telecommunications Performance Engineering Workshop'', Springer 1991 *Studying the performance properties of concurrent programs by simulation experiments on synthetic programs ''ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review 20.1'' 1992 pp239–240. *A Statistical Study of the Factors that Affect the Performance of a Class of Parallel Programs on a MIMD Computer, in: ''Proceedings of the IFIP WG10.3 International Conference on Decentralized and Distributed Systems'', Springer 1993, pp175–186 *Black Box Representations of Parallel Programs, in: Monique Becker, Luc Litzler, Michel Trehel eds., ''Transputers '94'', IOS Press 1994 *The Posie project: studies to support the design of operating systems for multicomputers, Computer Systems Group, University of Edinburgh 1995 *The dynamic behaviour of parallel programs under process migration, in ''Concurrency and Computation'', October 1995 Some articles co-authored. List not complete.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Candlin, Rosemary 1927 births 2025 deaths British computer scientists British women scientists British women computer scientists Alumni of the University of Cambridge Academics of the University of Edinburgh People associated with CERN Scientific computing researchers