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Cicely Popplewell

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Duncan.Hull (talk | contribs) at 12:39, 21 December 2018 (née Popplewell, Cicely Mary Williams by marriage, added Girton College, Cambridge). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Cicely Williams
Born
Cicely Mary Popplewell

1920 (1920)
Stockton-on-Tees
Died1995 (aged 74–75)
Buxton
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge (BA, MA)
Known forwork on Manchester Mark 1 and Ferranti Mark 1
Scientific career
FieldsSoftware engineering
InstitutionsUniversity of Manchester

Cicely Mary Williams (née Popplewell, 1920-1995) was a British computer programmer who worked with Alan Turing on the Manchester Mark 1.

Early life and education

Popplewell was born in 1920 in Stockton-on-Tees.[citation needed] Her parents were Bessie and Alfred Popplewell. She attended Sherbrook Private Girls School.[1] She studied the Mathematical Tripos at the University of Cambridge.[2] She worked with statistics in the form of punched cards.[2] She was considered an expert in the Brunsviga desk calculator.[3] She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1942, which was converted to a Master of Arts degree in 1949 from Girton College, Cambridge.[4]

Career

In 1949 Popplewell joined Alan Turing in the Computer Machine Learning department at the University of Manchester to help with the programming of a prototype computer.[5][6] She worked alongside Audrey Bates, a University of Manchester mathematics graduate.[7][8] Her first role was to create a library for the prototype Manchester Mark 1.[9] This included input/output routines and mathematical functions, and a reciprocal square root routine.[9] She worked on ray tracing.[9] Together they designed the programming language for the Ferranti Mark 1.[10][11] She wrote the Programmers Handbook for the Ferranti Mark 1 in 1951.[12] Whilst Turing worked on Scheme A, an early operating system, Popplewell proposed Scheme B, which allowed for decimal numbers, in 1952.[13][14]

Popplewell taught the first ever programming class in Argentina at the University of Buenos Aires in 1961.[15][16][17] Her class included the computer scientist Cecilia Berdichevski.[15] She was supported by the British Council.[18] Popplewell published the textbook Information Processing in 1962.[19]

Personal life

In 1969 Popplewell married George Keith Williams in Chapel-en-le-Frith.[20] She died in 1995 in Buxton.

References

  1. ^ "Greaves Hall - The history of Greaves Hall, Banks, Nr Southport". northmeols.com. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  2. ^ a b Hodges, Andrew (2014). Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film The Imitation Game - Updated Edition. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400865123.
  3. ^ "Interview:David, Mike". chilton-computing.org.uk. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  4. ^ https://twitter.com/theUL/status/1076092273933340673
  5. ^ "The Manchester Mark 1 (Digital 60)". curation.cs.manchester.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  6. ^ Anon. "Catalogue of historical computer documents donated by Professor D B G Edwards" (PDF). Retrieved 2018-12-18. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  7. ^ Lavington, Simon (2012). Alan Turing and His Contemporaries: Building the World's First Computers. BCS, The Chartered Institute. ISBN 9781780171050.
  8. ^ "Alan Turing Scrapbook - Manchester Computers". turing.org.uk. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  9. ^ a b c Campbell-Kelly, Martin (1980). "Programming the Mark I: Early Programming Activity at the University of Manchester". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 2 (2): 130–168. doi:10.1109/mahc.1980.10018. ISSN 1058-6180.
  10. ^ "HOPL". hopl.info. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  11. ^ "Alan Turing - Mathematician, war time code breaker, pioneer of computer science and in charge of Hut 8". 1stassociated.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  12. ^ "Turing Manual". curation.cs.manchester.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  13. ^ "The Rutherford Journal - The New Zealand Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology". rutherfordjournal.org. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  14. ^ "Full text of "A history of Manchester computers (book)"". archive.org. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  15. ^ a b Berdichevsky, Cecilia, "The Beginning of Computer Science in Argentina — Clementina - (1961–1966)", IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, Springer US, pp. 203–215, doi:10.1007/978-0-387-34741-7_15, ISBN 9780387346373
  16. ^ Impagliazzo, John (2006-07-27). History of Computing and Education 2 (HCE2): IFIP 19th World Computer Congress, WG 9.7, TC 9: History of Computing, Proceedings of the Second Conference on the History of Computing and Education, August 21–24, Santiago, Chile. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 9780387346373.
  17. ^ Leal, Luis Germán Rodríguez; Carnota, Raúl (2015-11-01). Historias de las TIC en América Latina y el Caribe: Inicios, desarrollos y rupturas (in Spanish). Fundación Telefónica. ISBN 9789802715282.
  18. ^ Carnota, Raul Jorge (2015). "The Beginning of Computer Science in Argentina and the Calculus Institute, 1957-1970". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 37 (4): 40–52. doi:10.1109/mahc.2015.34. ISSN 1058-6180.
  19. ^ "Information Processing 1962: Amazon.co.uk: Cicely M Popplewell: Books". amazon.co.uk. Retrieved 2018-12-18.
  20. ^ "Ancestry - Sign In". ancestry.com. Retrieved 2018-12-19.
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