James H. Wilkinson#REAP

Born in Strood, England, he won a Foundation Scholarship to Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School in Rochester.{{cite web |title=J. H. Wilkinson – A.M. Turing Award Laureate |url=https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/wilkinson_0671216.cfm |website=amturing.acm.org |access-date=12 July 2022}} He studied the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated as Senior Wrangler."Easily at the top of the First Class", from the MacTutor biography.

Taking up war work in 1940, he began working on ballistics but transferred to the National Physical Laboratory in 1946, where he worked with Alan Turing on the ACE{{cite book |first=James H. |last=Wilkinson |chapter=Turing's Work at the National Physical Laboratory and the Construction of Pilot ACE, DEUCE and ACE |editor1-first=Nicholas |editor1-last=Metropolis |editor2-first=J. |editor2-last=Howlett |editor3-first=Gian-Carlo |editor3-last=Rota |title=A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century |publisher=Academic Press |year=1980 |isbn=0124916503 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofcomputi0000inte }} computer project. Later, Wilkinson's interests took him into the numerical analysis field, where he discovered many significant algorithms.

Wilkinson received the Turing Award in 1970 "for his research in numerical analysis to facilitate the use of the high-speed digital computer, having received special recognition for his work in computations in linear algebra and 'backward' error analysis." In the same year, he also gave the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) John von Neumann Lecture.

Wilkinson also received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1973.{{Cite web|url=http://www1.hw.ac.uk/graduation/honorary-graduates.htm|title=Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh: Honorary Graduates|website=www1.hw.ac.uk|access-date=2016-04-07|archive-date=18 April 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160418163907/http://www1.hw.ac.uk/graduation/honorary-graduates.htm|url-status=dead}}

He was elected as a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society in 1974 for his pioneering work in computer science.

The James H. Wilkinson Prize in Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, established in 1982 by SIAM, and J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software, established in 1991, are named in his honour.

In 1987, Wilkinson won the Chauvenet Prize of the Mathematical Association of America, for his paper "The Perfidious Polynomial".{{cite book | editor-last=Golub | editor-first=Gene H. | author-last=Wilkinson | author-first=James H. | title=Studies in numerical analysis | publisher=Mathematical Association of America | publication-place=[Washington, D.C.] | date=1984 | isbn=0-88385-126-1 | oclc=12110138 | pages=1–28}}

Wilkinson married Heather Ware in 1945. He died at home of a heart attack on 5 October 1986. His wife and their son survived him, a daughter having predeceased him.

• {{cite book |first=James Hardy |last=Wilkinson |title=Rounding Errors in Algebraic Processes |date=1963 |publisher=Prentice-Hall, Inc. |location=Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA |edition=1 |mr=161456 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yFogU9Ot-qsC|isbn=9780486679990 }} (REAP)
• Reprinted from SIAM in 2023, ISBN 978-1-61197-751-6.
• {{cite book |first=James Hardy |last=Wilkinson |title=The Algebraic Eigenvalue Problem |series=Monographs on Numerical Analysis |date=1965 |edition=1 |publisher=Oxford University Press / Clarendon Press |url=https://archive.org/details/algebraiceigenva0000wilk |url-access=registration |isbn=0198534183 |access-date=2016-02-11}} (AEP)
• with Christian Reinsch: Handbook for Automatic Computation, Volume II, Linear Algebra, Springer-Verlag, 1971
• The Perfidious Polynomial. In: Studies in Numerical Analysis, pp. 1–28, MAA Stud. Math., 24, Math. Assoc. America, Washington, DC, 1984

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• {{cite web |url=http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~higham/photos/wilkinson/wilkinson_021.htm |title=Photo of Wilkinson |series=Nick Higham's photo archive}} {{cite web |url=http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~higham/photos/ |title=Nick Higham's archive |publisher=University of Manchester |department=Mathematics |place=Manchester, UK}}
• [https://history.siam.org/pdfs2/Wilkinson-complete.pdf "An interview with James H. Wilkinson", Conducted by J. C. Nash on 13 July, 1984]
• {{cite web |url=https://nla-group.org/advances-in-numerical-linear-algebra-2019/ |series=Advances in Numerical Linear Algebra |title=Celebrating the centenary of the birth of James H. Wilkinson |date=29–30 May 2019 |access-date=12 September 2019 |archive-date=2 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200802031033/https://nla-group.org/advances-in-numerical-linear-algebra-2019/ |url-status=dead }}

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{{Chauvenet Prize recipients}}

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Category:1919 births

Category:1986 deaths

Category:20th-century English mathematicians

Category:British computer scientists

Category:Turing Award laureates

Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge

Category:Fellows of the British Computer Society

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society

Category:People from Strood

Category:People educated at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School

Category:Senior Wranglers

Category:Numerical analysts

Category:Scientists of the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom)