Professor Frederic Calland Williams

In 1946 he was appointed as head of the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Manchester. There, with Tom Kilburn he pioneered the first stored-program digital computer. He is particularly well known for his invention of the Williams-Kilburn tube, an early memory device, and the Manchester Mark 1 computer. Freddie Williams received numerous honours in his life, most notably professionally Fellow of the Royal Society (1950), the Faraday Medal of the I.E.E. (1972) and the Pioneer Award of the I.E.E.E. (1972), and nationally the O.B.E. (1945), the C.B.E. (1961) and a Knight Bachelor (1976).