Cicely Popplewell facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Cicely Williams
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| Born |
Cicely Mary Popplewell
29 October 1920 Stockport, England
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| Died | 1995 (aged 74–75) Buxton, England
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| Alma mater | University of Cambridge (BA, MA) |
| Known for | Work on Manchester Mark 1 and Ferranti Mark 1 |
| Spouse(s) | George Keith Williams |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Software engineering |
| Institutions | University of Manchester |
| Influences | Alan Turing |
Cicely Mary Williams (born Popplewell) was a clever British software engineer. She was born on October 29, 1920, and passed away on June 20, 1995. She worked with the famous computer scientist Alan Turing on some of the very first computers, like the Manchester Mark 1.
Contents
Early Life and Learning
Cicely Popplewell was born in Stockport, England. Her dad was an accountant. She went to a private girls' school called Sherbrook.
Later, she studied advanced mathematics at the University of Cambridge. She became very good at working with statistics using punched cards. She was also an expert with a special type of calculator called the Brunsviga desk calculator.
She earned her first degree in 1942 and a master's degree in 1949 from Girton College, Cambridge.
Her Amazing Career
In 1943, Cicely worked as a technical assistant at Rolls-Royce Limited. She also joined the Women's Engineering Society, which supported women in engineering.
Working with Alan Turing
In 1949, Cicely joined Alan Turing at the University of Manchester. Her job was to help program a new computer prototype. She even shared an office with Turing!
Her first big task was to create a "library" for the Manchester Mark 1 computer. This library included important programs for things like putting information into the computer and getting it out. It also had programs for math problems, like finding the square root of a number. She also worked on something called ray tracing, which is used to create realistic images.
Cicely and Alan Turing worked together to design the programming language for the Ferranti Mark 1 computer. She wrote the Programmers Handbook for this computer in 1951. She made Turing's original manual much easier to understand for other programmers.
New Ideas and Teaching
Alan Turing worked on an early operating system called Scheme A. But Cicely came up with her own idea, Scheme B, in 1952. This new system allowed the computer to work with decimal numbers, which was a big step forward!
After her work on these early computers, Cicely became an advisor at the University of Manchester Computing Service. People remembered her as a kind and helpful person.
In 1961, Cicely Popplewell traveled to Argentina. There, she taught the very first programming class at the University of Buenos Aires. This was a huge deal for computer science in that country!
She also wrote a textbook called Information Processing in 1962. Her life and work were later written about in a book called Alan Turing’s Manchester in 2019.
Personal Life
In 1969, Cicely Popplewell married George Keith Williams. She passed away in 1995 in Buxton, England.
See also
In Spanish: Cicely Popplewell para niños
