Stanley Gill (26 March 1926 – 5 April 1975) was a British computer scientist credited, along with Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler, with the invention of the first computer subroutine.
Early Life and Education
Stanley Gill was born on 26 March 1926 in Worthing, West Sussex, England. He was educated at Worthing High School for Boys and, during his schooldays, was a member of an amateur dramatic society. In 1943, he was awarded a State Scholarship and went to St John's College, Cambridge, where he read Mathematics and Natural Sciences. He graduated with a BA in 1947 and an MA in 1950.
Career
Gill worked at the National Physical Laboratory from 1947 to 1950, where he met his wife, Audrey Lee, whom he married in 1949. From 1952 to 1955 he was a Research Fellow at St John's College, working in a team led by Maurice Wilkes on pioneering research with the EDSAC computer at the Cavendish Laboratory.
In 1952, he developed a very early computer game. It involved a dot (termed a "sheep") approaching a line in which one of two gates could be opened. The game was controlled via the lightbeam of the EDSAC's paper tape reader. Interrupting the beam (such as by the player placing their hand in it) would open the upper gate; leaving the beam unbroken would result in the lower gate opening.
He earned a PhD in 1953 and, following a year as Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana, joined the Computer Department at Ferranti Ltd in the UK. In 1963 he was appointed Professor of Automatic Data Processing at UMIST, Manchester. In 1964 he was appointed to the newly created Chair of Computing Science and head of the Computing Unit at Imperial College, University of London. This unit was later merged into the Imperial College Centre for Computing and Automation, which Gill became director of, while also working as a consultant to the Ministry of Technology.
Gill was a founding member of the Real Time Club in 1967 and served as its chairman from 1970 to 1975. In 1970 he became Chairman of Software Sciences Holdings Ltd and was a Director of various companies in the Miles Roman Group. From 1972 until his death in 1975 he was Senior Consultant to PA International Management Consultants Ltd. He served as President of the British Computer Society from 1967 to 1968.
Key Contributions
Gill is best known for his role, alongside Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler, in developing the concept of the computer subroutine and subroutine libraries. He also contributed the Runge-Kutta-Gill method, a numerical technique for the step-by-step integration of differential equations in automatic digital computing machines.
Publications
- The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer (1951, with Maurice Wilkes and David Wheeler) — a foundational text in computer programming.
- "A process for the step-by-step integration of differential equations in an automatic digital computing machine" (1951) — introducing the Runge-Kutta-Gill method.
- "The diagnosis of mistakes in programmes on the EDSAC" (1951).
- "The application of an electronic digital computer to problems in mathematics and physics" — PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge (1952).
Death
Stanley Gill died on 5 April 1975 at the age of 49.
