| Audrey Bates | |
| Birth Name: | Margery Audrey Bates |
| Birth Date: | 1928 |
| Alma Mater: | University of Manchester |
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Margery Audrey Bates (Clayton Wallis) (1928-2014) was a British-American computer programmer who, in 1948, wrote the earliest program for lambda calculus calculations on the Manchester Mark I computer.[1]
Bates graduated with a First in Mathematics from University of Manchester in the summer of 1949.[2] She was taken on as a research student by Alan Turing, and shared an office with him and Cicely Popplewell.[3] In 1950 Bates submitted an MSc thesis entitled "The mechanical solution of a problem in Church's Lambda calculus".[4] This thesis documents a successful attempt to carry out higher-order logical reasoning on the extremely primitive Manchester Mark I electronic computer.
When the Manchester Mark I was commercialised by the local electronics firm Ferranti, Bates moved to work with them as a programmer. Whilst at Ferranti she composed several sections (some uncredited) of Vivian Bowdon's Faster Than Thought, a popular introduction to electronic computing.[5]
In 1952, Bates went to work on the FERUT, the Ferranti Mark I installed at the University of Toronto. In 1955, Bates was pictured supervising the FERUT when it carried out the first automated remote access to a computer.[6] [7]
In 1979, Bates was working as a 'futurist' at a US military think tank.[8]
Bates married twice and had four children. Her first husband, Ken Wallis, was a fellow Ferranti programmer;[9] her second husband was Leigh Clayton (1927–2024) and it was under the name of Clayton that Bates published her later work.