Max Newman

Max Newman
FRS
Born
Maxwell Herman Alexander Neumann

(1897-02-07)7 February 1897[4]
Chelsea, London, England
Died22 February 1984(1984-02-22) (aged 87)
Cambridge, England
NationalityBritish
Alma materSt John's College, Cambridge
Known forElements of the topology of plane sets of points[5]
Newman's lemma
Newmanry section at Bletchley Park
Heath Robinson (codebreaking machine)
Colossus computer
Newman's problem
Spouses
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​
(m. 1934; died 1973)​
  • Margaret Penrose
ChildrenEdward and William
AwardsFellow of the Royal Society (1939)[1]
Sylvester Medal (1958)
De Morgan Medal (1962)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
University of Manchester
Princeton University
Doctoral studentsSze-Tsen Hu
Gilbert Robinson
Hsien Chung Wang[2][3]

Maxwell Herman Alexander Newman, FRS[1] (7 February 1897 – 22 February 1984), generally known as Max Newman, was a British mathematician and codebreaker. His work in World War II led to the construction of Colossus,[6] the world's first operational, programmable electronic computer, and he established the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at the University of Manchester, which produced the world's first working, stored-program electronic computer in 1948, the Manchester Baby.[7][8][9][10][11]

  1. ^ a b Adams, J. F. (1985). "Maxwell Herman Alexander Newman. 7 February 1897–22 February 1984". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 31: 436–452. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1985.0015. S2CID 62649711.
  2. ^ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Max Newman", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
  3. ^ Max Newman at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ^ Wylie, Shaun (2004). "Newman, Maxwell Herman Alexander (1897–1984)". In Good, I. J (ed.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31494. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  5. ^ Newman, Max (1939). Elements of the topology of plane sets of points. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-24956-3.
  6. ^ Colossus: The secrets of Bletchley Park's code-breaking computers. Oxford University Press, USA. 2010. ISBN 978-0-19-957814-6.
  7. ^ Jack Copeland. "The Modern History of Computing". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 30 March 2012.
  8. ^ The Papers of Max Newman, St John's College Library
  9. ^ The Newman Digital Archive, St John's College Library & The University of Portsmouth
  10. ^ Anderson, David (2013). "Max Newman: Forgotten Man of Early British Computing". Communications of the ACM. 56 (5): 29–31. doi:10.1145/2447976.2447986. S2CID 1904488.
  11. ^ Max Newman publications indexed by Microsoft Academic