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Department of Computer Science
HomeDepartment of Computer ScienceAbout usNews50 years of Computer ScienceHistory of the DepartmentJohn Willmott: an obituary
The departrment's first DPhil's - seated (l-r) Dr R J Thomas, Dr A B Haynes - with Dr A J Willmott and Professor I C Pyle

John Willmott: an obituary

Dr John Willmott died on 2 January 2023 after a short illness.

John was appointed to the university’s first lectureship in Computation, taking up the post in March 1968 having previously been a lecturer at UMIST. His early recollections of being appointed to and working at York can be seen in a document he wrote in 2010. 

John supervised the department’s first PhD students, including Alan Burns, and taught modules in Numerical Methods and Numerical Analysis when Computer Science was still just a subsidiary of degrees in Mathematics, Physics or Biology. John was a member of the first Board of Studies in Computer Science, and a recipient of one the department’s earliest research grants, £15,310 awarded by the SRC to investigate “Numerical modelling of thermal regenerators”.

John retired in 1998, but was a frequent visitor to, and retained a desk in, the department for a number of years after that. He will be much missed by those who knew him.