James H. Wilkinson

Infobox_Scientist
name = James Hardy Wilkinson


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birth_date = birth date|1919|9|27|mf=y
birth_place = flagicon|ENG Strood, England
death_date = death date and age|1986|10|5|1919|9|27
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nationality = English
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field = Numerical Analysis
work_institution = National Physical Laboratory
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prizes = Turing Award
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James Hardy Wilkinson (27 September, 1919 – 5 October, 1986) was a prominent figure in the field of numerical analysis, a field at the boundary of applied mathematics and computer science particularly useful to physics and engineering.

Born in Strood, England, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated top of the class. Taking up war work in 1940, he began working on ballistics but transferred to the National Physical Laboratory in 1946, where he worked with Alan Turing on the ACE computer project.

Later, Wilkinson's interests took him into the numerical analysis field, where he discovered many significant algorithms.

He received the Turing Award in 1970 "for his research in numerical analysis to facilitate the use of the high-speed digital computer, having received special recognition for his work in computations in linear algebra and 'backward' error analysis." In the same year, he also gave the John von Neumann Lecture at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

The J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software is named in his honour.

ee also

* Wilkinson's polynomial

External links and sources

*
* James H. Wilkinson, "Turing's Work at the National Physical Laboratory and the Construction of Pilot ACE, DEUCE and ACE" (in Nicholas Metropolis, J. Howlett, Gian-Carlo Rota, (editors), "A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century", Academic Press, New York, 1980)
* [http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~higham/photos/wilkinson/wilkinson_021.htm Photo] of Wilkinson from Nick Higham's [http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~higham/photos/ archive]
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Persondata
NAME= Wilkinson, James Hardy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION= English mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH= September 27, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH= Strood, England
DATE OF DEATH= October 5, 1986
PLACE OF DEATH=