[LINK] Memorial Service for Professor John Bennett

[Tom Worthington]

A memorial service for Australian computer pioneer Professor John
Bennett AO will be held at the University of Sydney, 24 February 2011.
Please register your attendance by 18 February 2011:
<http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=load&temID=noticedetails&notID=1087>.

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) reported the death of its founder
Professor John Bennett AO, on 9 December 2010. John helped to build one
of the first computers in the world, EDSAC, at Cambridge University (UK)
with Maurice Wilkes before, working on computers in Australia.

During my time as President of ACS I bumped into John a few times. On
one occasion I was in a queue of people going in to the Lucas Heights
nuclear reactor. I noticed John in the queue (he was hard to miss) he
made a comment about how after World War II some of his colleagues
stayed in radar, some went into computing (as he did) and others into
nuclear power.

In 1996 I visited the Cambridge University Computer Lab and handed the
head of the lab, Professor Robin Milner, a copy of 'Computing in
Australia - The development of a profession'. He looked at the cover of
the book said "Ah! young John Bennett!". I had no idea what Professor
Milner was talking about, until I looked at the book cover, saw John had
edited it and then realised that he had studied in this lab 50 years ago.

Some information I collected on John Bennett for the ACS:

* First ACS President 1966:
<http://www.acs.org.au/media/index.cfm?attributes.fuseaction=History>
* JRPIT special edition "A Tribute to John Benett" 2001:
<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22A+TRIBUTE+TO+JOHN+BENNETt%22+site%3Aacs.org.au%2Fjrpit>.
* "John Makepeace Bennett – An Inspiration", by Jenny Edwards, JRPIT,
2001: <http://www.acs.org.au/jrpit/abstracts/33_273.pdf>
* "John Bennett", Profiles in ICT series, Information Age:
<http://www.acs.org.au/ictcareers/index.cfm?action=show&conID=john>
* Bennett, John M. (John Makepeace) (1921-), National Library opf
Australia "Trove" entry: <http://trove.nla.gov.au/people/494754?c=people>
* EDSAC 99 - Fiftieth anniversary of the EDSAC Computer, by John M.
Bennett, 1999 (includes photo of J.M.Bennett working on EDSAC I, in
1947): <http://www.tomw.net.au/papers/edsac99.html>.
* Bennett J.M., Broomham R., Murton P.M., Pearcey T., Rutledge R.W.
(eds.) (1994) 'Computing in Australia - The development of a profession'
Hale & Iremonger in association with the Australian Computer Society
Inc, 1994
* 124 publications attributed to John Benett:
<http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=p&q=+inauthor:%22John+Makepeace+Bennett%22&source=gbs_metadata_r&cad=3>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra