Strachey, Christopher (1916–1975)

Abstract

Christopher Strachey (1916-1975) was Professor of Computer Science at Oxford University from 1971 until his death. He was born into the well-known Strachey family, associated with the Engilsh artistic circle, the Bloomsbury Group. He showed a scientific bent, however, and graduated in physics from Cambridge University in 1939. During the Second world War he served in an electronics development laboratory at Standard Telephones and Cables where he gained some computing experience using a differential analyzer (q.v.). Strachey was a gifted teacher, and in 1944 he became a schoolmaster. While teaching at Harrow School in 1951, he began in his spare time to program the Pilot ACE computer at the National Physical Laboratory and the Mark I computer at Manchester University. As a result of this early involvement with computers, in 1952 he became a technical officer with the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC)--a quasi-governmental organization created for the commercial exploitation of British technological innovations. While with the NRDC, he played a leading part in the calculations for the St Lawrence Seaway in Canada, and undertook the logical design of the Ferranti Pegasus computer. Each achievement was considered a tour de force in the late 1950s. Strachey was one of the first proselytizers of time sharing (q.v.). From 1959-65, he was a private consultant, and in 1962 he joined the University Mathematical Laboratory, Cambridge, on a half-time basis. At Cambridge he led the development of the CPL programming language. Although CPL was never satisfactorily implemented, the design of the language and the people associated with the project subsequently made their mark on programming language development. During this period, he also developed the General Purpose Macrogenerator. In 1965, Strachey wound up his consultancy in favor of the academic life-first spending a year at MIT, and in 1966 founding the Programming Research Group at Oxford University. He was appointed to a personal chair in 1971. During his last years, Strachey collaborated with the American logician Dana Scott, with whom he laid the foundations of denotational semantics. Although Strachey had a notorious reluctance to publish throughout his life, the few papers he did produce show the literary elegance and wit characteristic of his family.