Jim Wilkinson | |
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 Jim Wilkinson with his Turing Award | |
| Born | James Hardy Wilkinson (1919-09-27)27 September 1919 Strood, England |
| Died | 5 October 1986(1986-10-05) (aged 67) Teddington, England |
| Education | Trinity College, Cambridge (BA) |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Numerical Analysis Numerical linear algebra |
| Institutions | National Physical Laboratory[2] |
James Hardy WilkinsonFRS[1] (27 September 1919 – 5 October 1986) was a prominent figure in the field ofnumerical analysis, a field at the boundary ofapplied mathematics andcomputer science particularly useful tophysics and engineering.[3][4][5]
Born inStrood, England, he won a Foundation Scholarship toSir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School inRochester.[6] He studied theCambridge Mathematical Tripos atTrinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated asSenior Wrangler.[7]
Taking up war work in 1940, he began working on ballistics but transferred to theNational Physical Laboratory[2] in 1946, where he worked withAlan Turing on theACE[8] computer project. Later, Wilkinson's interests took him into the numerical analysis field, where he discovered many significantalgorithms.
Wilkinson received theTuring 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 theSociety for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)John von Neumann Lecture.
Wilkinson also received anHonorary Doctorate fromHeriot-Watt University in 1973.[9]
He was elected as a Distinguished Fellow of theBritish Computer Society in 1974 for his pioneering work in computer science.
TheJames H. Wilkinson Prize in Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, established in 1982 by SIAM, andJ. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software, established in 1991, are named in his honour.
In 1987, Wilkinson won theChauvenet Prize of theMathematical Association of America, for his paper "The Perfidious Polynomial".[10]
Wilkinson married Heather Ware in 1945. He died at home of a heart attack on 5 October 1986. His wife and their son survived him, a daughter having predeceased him.
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