Professor Stanley Gill

A British computer scientist credited, along with Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler, with the invention of the first computer subroutine. He was born in Worthing, West Sussex, England, educated at Worthing High School for Boys and was, during his schooldays, a member of an amateur dramatic society. In 1943 he was awarded a State Scholarship and went to St. John?s College, Cambridge, where he read Mathematics/ Natural Sciences. He graduated BA in 1947 and MA in 1950. He worked at the National Physical Laboratory from 1947 to 1950, and from 1952 to 1955 he was a Research Fellow at St John?s working in a team led by Maurice Wilkes; the research involved pioneering work with the EDSAC computer in the Cavendish Laboratory. He gained PhD in 1953 and, following a year as Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana, joined the Computer Department at Ferranti Ltd. In the UK in 1963 he was appointed Professor of Automatic Data Processing, UMIST, Manchester; and, following various consultancies including International Computers Ltd., he was appointed in 1964 to the newly-created Chair of Computing Science at Imperial College, London University. During his time at Imperial College, he was also Director of the Imperial College Centre for Computing and Automation and was a consultant to the Ministry of Technology. In 1970 he became Chairman of Software Sciences Holdings Ltd and was Director of various companies in the Miles Roman Group. From 1972 until his death in 1975 he was Senior Consultant to PA International Management Consultants Ltd. He travelled widely and advised on the establishment of departments of computing in several universities around the world. He was also President of the British Computer Society from 1967 to 1968.