Brian Randell

Brian Randell ( b. 1936 ) is a British computer scientist and computer historian. He was a professor at Newcastle University.

Randell studied mathematics at Imperial College London with the conclusion of 1957. Thereafter, he worked for the computer company English Electric and 1964 for IBM before he became a professor of computer science at Newcastle.

In English Electric, he dealt with compilers, for example, an Algol 60 compiler. At IBM, where he was Thomas J. Watson Research Center, he focused on architecture of high performance computers and design methodology of operating systems.

It deals mainly with later fault tolerance and Zuverflässigkeit of software.

He also deals with the history of computers before 1950. His publications include over Percy Ludgate, Leonardo Torres y Quevedo and Alan Turing and the Colossus He was a founding editor of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

He also deals with genealogy.

Writings

• Publisher Predictable dependable computer systems, Springer Verlag 1995 ( ESPRIT basic research series )
• Philip Treleaven (Editor) VLSI Architecture, Prentice Hall 1983
• With LJ Russell ' Algol 60 Implementation, Academic Press 1964
• Publisher The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers, Springer-Verlag, 1973, 2nd edition 1975, 3rd edition 1982
• Software Engineering in 1968, in Proc. of the 4th Int. Conf. on Software Engineering, Munich 1979, p 1-10
• Memories of the NATO Software Engineering Conferences, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 20, 1998, pp. 51-54
• " The Origins of Computer Programming, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 16, 1994, p.6 -14