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| Donald Watts Davies | |
| Born | June 7, 1924 Treorchy, Wales |
|---|---|
| Died | May 28, 2000 (aged 75) |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Institutions | National Physical Laboratory |
| Alma mater | Imperial College |
| Known for | Packet switching |
Donald Watts Davies CBE FRS (June 7, 1924 – May 28, 2000) was a Welsh computer scientist who was a co-inventor of packet switching (and originator of the term), along with Paul Baran in the US.
Davies was born in Treorchy in the Rhondda Valley, Wales. He received BSc degrees in physics (1943) and mathematics (1947) at Imperial College London. In 1955, he married Diane Burton.
He worked at the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington just outside London. From 1947, he worked with Alan Turing on the Pilot ACE computer and indeed spotted mistakes in Turing's seminal 1936 paper On Computable Numbers, much to Turing's annoyance. These were perhaps some of the first "programming" errors in existence, even if they were for a theoretical computer, the universal Turing machine. He headed the NPL Autonomic Division from 1966 and worked on computer network security from the late 1970s.
In 1970, Davies helped build a packet switched network called the Mark I to serve the NPL in the UK. It was replaced with the Mark II in 1973, and remained in operation until 1986, influencing other research in the UK and Europe. [1]
Davies was appointed a CBE in 1983 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1987.
Contents |
Books
- With D. Barber: Communication Networks for Computers, Wiley, 1973.
- With W. Price, D. Barber, C. Solomonides: Computer Networks and Their Protocols, Wiley, 1979.
- With W. Price: Security for Computer Networks, Wiley, 1984.
See also
External links
- Biography from the History of Computing Project
- Famous names at NPL
- Guardian obituary
- Internet Society obituary
- UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL) & Donald Davies from Living Internet
- Donald Davies (1924–2000)
References
- Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing, documentray ca. 1972 about the ARPANET. Includes footage of Donald W. Davies.
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