Audrey Bates (programmer)

Margery Audrey Bates (Clayton Wallis) (1928-2014) was a British-American computer programmer who, in 1948, wrote the earliest program for lambda calculus calculations on the Manchester Mark I computer.[1]

Audrey Bates
Born
Margery Audrey Bates

1928
Died2014 (aged 85–86)
Alma materUniversity of Manchester

Career

Bates graduated with a First in Mathematics from University of Manchester in the summer of 1949.[2] She was taken on as a research student by Alan Turing, and shared an office with him and Cicely Popplewell.[3] In 1950 Bates submitted an MSc thesis entitled "The mechanical solution of a problem in Church's Lambda calculus".[4] This thesis documents a successful attempt to carry out higher-order logical reasoning on the extremely primitive Manchester Mark I electronic computer.[3][2]

When the Manchester Mark I was commercialised by the local electronics firm Ferranti, Bates moved to work with them as a programmer. Whilst at Ferranti she composed several sections (some uncredited) of Vivian Bowdon's Faster Than Thought, a popular introduction to electronic computing.[2][5]

In 1952, Bates went to work on the FERUT, the Ferranti Mark I installed at the University of Toronto.[2] In 1955, Bates was pictured supervising the FERUT when it carried out the first automated remote access to a computer.[6][7]

In 1979, Bates was working as a 'futurist' at a US military think tank.[8]

Personal life

Bates married twice and had four children.[1] Her first husband, Ken Wallis, was a fellow Ferranti programmer;[9] her second husband was Leigh Clayton and it was under the name of Clayton that Bates published her later work.[7]

References
  1. "Birth and death dates for Marjorie Audrey Bates/Wallis". ancestry.co.uk.
  2. Swinton, Jonathan (2019). Alan Turing's Manchester. Manchester: Manchester: Infang Publishing. pp. p119. ISBN 978-0-9931789-2-4.
  3. Andrew, Hodges (2014). The Alan Turing : the enigma. London. ISBN 9781784700089. OCLC 890394618.
  4. Bates, Audrey (1950). The mechanical solution of a problem in Church's Lambda calculus (Thesis). University of Manchester.
  5. Bowdon (1953). Faster Than Thought. Pitman.
  6. Pedwell, Susan (2013). "Paving the Way for the Information Highway".
  7. "Women at the console". Alan Turing's Manchester. Retrieved 2021-01-18.
  8. "DTIC ADA083756: An Assessment of the Influence of Emerging Social and Economic Trends on the People and Management of the Coast Guard. Volume II". December 1979.
  9. Lavington, Simon, Stardust: tales from the early days of computing. Talk to the Computer Conservation Society, Manchester, 19 February 2019.
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