Vviewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/2447976.2447986
historical reflections
max newman:
Forgotten man of
early british Computing
Unless you spent last year living in a cave, it was more or less impossible not to know 2012 was the Turing Centenary year. While it
was gratifying to see so many exciting events arranged in Turing’s honor, I could not help thinking we had
moved more or less seamlessly from a
position where Turing was largely ignored, to one where it sometimes felt
as if no one else counted. In his editorial for the January 2013
Communications, 5 Moshe Vardi similarly gives
voice to a very reasonable concern
that “we may have gone from celebration to hagiography.”
Photogra Ph courtesy of lonDon mathematIcal socIety
Maxwell (Max) Herman Alexan-
der Newman, whose own centenary
passed relatively quietly in 1997,a was
closely associated with Turing, 3 and
from the mid-1930s onward played
an important part in promoting and
shaping Turing’s career and promul-
gating as well as implementing his
ideas on computing.b
Despite being largely unknown in
many computing circles, Max Newman
maxwell (max) Newman.
a See http://www.cdpa.co.uk/Newman/MHAN/
exhibition-panel.php?Title=Welcome%20to%20the
%0Newman%20Exhibition&Picture=ExPoster1.jpg
b For a much fuller account of Newman’s contribution to the early development of computers
in the U.K., see Anderson, D. “Was the Manchester ‘Baby’ conceived at Bletchley Park?,”
BCS e WIC, (2008); http://www.bcs.org/upload/
pdf/ewic_tur04_paper3.pdf.
was, in his own right, one of the most
significant figures in the early history
of British computing. He was active in
the field for more than 10 years initially
at Cambridge before World War II,
then at Bletchley Park during hostili-
ties, and finally in the postwar setting
of the University of Manchester in the
mid-late 1940s. Newman’s very Eng-
lish habit of understating his personal
contribution, combined with his pref-
erence for stressing the accomplish-
ments of others may explain why histo-
rians of computing have generally paid
little attention to this extraordinary
man who is, in consequence, princi-
