Wilkinson

Today was the first of a two-day meeting to celebrate 100 years since the birth of JH "Jim" Wilkinson. A quite brilliant man, until recently he was the youngest person to come top of his year in Maths at Cambridge, after which - and scientific service in the war - he became the father of numerical linear algebra (NLA). Without good NLA techniques, much of what makes things run efficiently in the world wouldn't be possible. I'm a big fan of his work but, sadly, I never heard him speak because he died a couple of years before I started my PhD. The meeting was a nice combination of (old) folk reminiscing about him and his work, and younger researchers presenting new work. Wilkinson started his career working for Turing, so it was appropriate that the meeting was held in the University's Turing Building. 

There was no social event in the  evening, so I nipped across the centre of Manchester to see "Rocketman", which was pretty good.