J. W. J. Williams Explained

John William Joseph (Bill) Williams (September[1] 1930 – 29 September 2012)[2] [3] was a computer scientist best known for inventing heapsort and the binary heap data structure in 1963 while working for Elliot Bros. (London) Ltd.[4] [5] [6] [7]

Personal life

He was born in England,[8] specifically in the district Chippenham in the county Wiltshire, to William Henry Williams and Mrs. Haines. During the 1939 Register, he lived at 12 The Vicarage St Mary Street, Chippenham M.B., Wiltshire, England[9] with Joseph Haines (born 1871), Eva F Williams (born 1903), and William H Williams (born 1883).[10]

Eva Florence Haines (born in Chippenham) was the daughter of Joseph Haines and Florence Ellen Light (born circa 1884).[11] [12] William H Williams (born 23 July 1883) and Eva Florence Haines (born 13 March 1903) were married on 29 January 1929 in Chippenham, Wiltshire, England.[13] [14] [15]

On 3 March 1962, John William Joseph Williams (mathematician, age 31) married Ann Zerny (nurse, age 23) at Christ Church in Chorleywood Parish in Hertfordshire County. They had children named Peter (Carey), Rob (Rick) and Richard (Charlotte), who had children named Rowan, Derek, Emmett, Reed, and Seth.

In 1974, he moved to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. On 10 June 1994, he was living at 18 Banting Crescent, Kanata, Ontario, Canada K2K 1P4.[16] He volunteered for Kanata Theatre, helping construct sets, design lighting, and occasionally act on stage.

On 29 September 2012, he died at age 82; on 6 October, he had a Celebration of Life at the Ron Maslin Playhouse, requesting donations in his memory to be given to Kanata Theatre and Ottawa Heart Institute.

Career

In 1952, he received a B.Sc. in mathematics from King's College, University of London.

In England, he worked as a programmer for Elliot Automation, formerly Elliot Brothers (London) Limited, where he invented heapsort and used it to create the event-driven Elliott Simulator Package (ESP) with the help of C. A. R. (Tony) Hoare.[17] He also worked for English Electric and GEC. He worked with Donald E. Knuth to develop a two-heap data structure that they called a "priority deque", published as an exercise in The Art of Computer Programming in 1973.[18] [19]

After moving to Canada in 1974, he worked for Bell-Northern Research Ltd., Ottawa (BNR) and Northern Telecom (Nortel) until retiring in 1995. At BNR, he worked on various software and hardware systems such as the DMS-100 digital telephone switch, publishing a paper about their software in June 1982. On 10 March 1988, Northern Telecom (retroactively initially Bell-Northern Research[20]) filed a US, and subsequently international, patent for a "Digital Key Telephone System", listing him as an inventor.[21] [22] [23] In 1992, he told Andre Vellino of Nortel Networks that "Design is the art of defining a system to meet a set of constraints".[24]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Record Transcription: England & Wales Births 1837-2006 . 2023-11-02 . Findmypast . brightsolid online publishing ltd . First name(s): John W J, Last name: Williams, Birth quarter: 4, Birth year: 1930, Mother's maiden name: Haines, District: Chippenham, County: Wiltshire.
  2. Web site: October 4, 2012 . J.W.J. WILLIAMS Obituary (2012) . 2023-09-20 . Ottawa Citizen . Legacy Remembers.
  3. Marriage certificate for John William Joseph Williams and Ann Zerny, 3 March 1962.
    GRO Reference Information: Year=1962, Qtr=M, Vol=04B, Page=686 (from https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV64-HY9Y)
    Text of document (ordered from https://www.gro.gov.uk/): in the presence of us, }
  4. Williams . J. W. J. . Received 1 October 1963, revised 15 February 1964. . Forsythe . G. E. . Algorithm 232: Heapsort . Algorithms . Communications of the ACM . 1 June 1964 . 7 . 6 . 347–348 . 10.1145/512274.512284 . 0001-0782 . Elliott Bros. (London) Ltd., Borehamwood, Herts, England . ACM Digital Library.
  5. Hantman . Nancy T. . December 1997 . And the winners are ... Spectrum's Second Quilt Block Contest . IEEE Spectrum . 34 . 12 . 49 . 10.1109/MSPEC.1997.642968 . 0018-9235 . 1939-9340 . COMPUTERS/FABRIC: Heapsort by J. W. J. (Bill) and Ann Williams, Kanata, Ont., Canada. . IEEE Xplore.
  6. Book: Brodal . Gerth Stølting . Pinotti . M. Cristina . Algorithm Theory — SWAT'98 . Comparator networks for binary heap construction . 1998 . Arnborg . Stefan . Ivansson . Lars . https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/BFb0054364 . Lecture Notes in Computer Science . 1432 . en . Berlin, Heidelberg . Springer . 158–168 . 10.1007/BFb0054364 . 11858/00-001M-0000-0014-9A0B-B . 978-3-540-69106-8.
  7. Book: Brodal . Gerth Stølting . Lagogiannis . George . Tarjan . Robert E. . Proceedings of the forty-fourth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing . Strict fibonacci heaps . 2012-05-19 . https://doi.org/10.1145/2213977.2214082 . STOC '12 . New York, NY, USA . Association for Computing Machinery . 1177–1184 . 10.1145/2213977.2214082 . 978-1-4503-1245-5. 3107885 .
  8. Penney . Brian K. . Williams . J. W. J. . June 1982 . Manuscript received July 21, 1981; revised December 17, 1981. . The Software Architecture for a Large Telephone Switch . IEEE Transactions on Communications . COM-30 . 6 . 1369–1378 . 10.1109/TCOM.1982.1095594 . 0090-6778 . 1558-0857 . IEEE Xplore.
  9. Web site: Search Results for 1939 Register: first name = "J.w.j." (incl. variants), last name = "Williams" (no variants), birth year = 1930 (±0) . 2023-11-02 . Findmypast . en .
  10. Web site: Search Results for 1939 Register: borough/district = "Chippenham M.b.", street = "St Mary" . 2023-11-02 . Findmypast . en .
  11. "England and Wales Census, 1911," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X72L-42Y : 21 July 2019), Eva Florence Haines in household of Joseph Haines, Chippenham with Tytherton Lucas, Wiltshire, England, United Kingdom; from "1911 England and Wales census," database and images, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : n.d.); citing PRO RG 14, The National Archives of the UK, Kew, Surrey.
  12. Web site: Record Transcription: England & Wales Births 1837-2006: Eva Florence Haines in 1903 . 2023-11-02 . Findmypast . brightsolid online publishing ltd.
  13. Web site: Eva Florence Haines (1903–Deceased), William H Williams (1883–Deceased) • Landscape View • Family Tree . 2023-11-02 . FamilySearch.
  14. Web site: Record Transcription: England & Wales Marriages 1837-2005: Eva F Haines in 1929 . 2023-11-02 . Findmypast . brightsolid online publishing ltd.
  15. Web site: Record Transcription: England & Wales Marriages 1837-2005: William H Williams in 1929 . 2023-11-02 . Findmypast . brightsolid online publishing ltd.
  16. Patent CA 1334303, Documents, PCT Correspondence on 1994-07-21, p. 5. (objectName=A1001001A20A23A93837H72760)
  17. Williams . J. W. J. . 1 January 1964 . E.S.P. The Elliott Simulator Package . The Computer Journal . The British Computer Society . 6 . 4 . 328–331 . 10.1093/comjnl/6.4.328 . Oxford Academic, Oxford University Press.
  18. 0706.2155v1 . Greg . Sepesi . Dualheap Selection Algorithm: Efficient, Inherently Parallel and Somewhat Mysterious . 14 Jun 2007. cs.DS .
  19. Book: Knuth, Donald Ervin . The Art of Computer Programming: Sorting and searching . 1973 . Addison-Wesley Publishing Company . 978-0-201-03803-3 . 1st . 3 . 159 . en . 5.2.3 Sorting by Selection, Exercise 31.
  20. Web site: Jul 20, 1988 . Execution date: May 30, 1988 . Patent assignment 004918/0852 . 2 November 2023 . Patent Assignment Search . United States Patent and Trademark Office.
  21. US. 4893310A. Digital key telephone system. 1988-03-10. 1987-11-30. 1990-01-09. Robertson. Maginley. Chapman. Thomas. David J.. Ronald J.. Alan S. J.. Terence N.. Northern Telecom Limited, Montreal, Canada.
  22. US. 5136585A. Digital key telephone system. 1989-03-01. 1992-08-04. Nizamuddin. Chapman. Williams. Redmond. Nadir. Alan S. J.. John W. J.. Alan M.. Northern Telecom Limited, Montreal, Canada.
  23. Patent CA 1334303, Documents, Office Letter on 1989-08-03. (objectName=A1001001A20A23A93406H72702)
  24. Web site: Vellino . Andre . October 2001 . Toward a Methodology of Rational System Design . 2 November 2023 . ResearchGate . 2, 13.

    Essay Books . Philosophia Mathematica . 10 . 2 . 252-253.
    states that this has been published in
    2001 . Woods . John . New Studies in Exact Philosophy: Logic, Mathematics and Science . 1999 Conference of the Society of Exact Philosophy . Hermes Science Publishing . Oxford . 307–320 . 1-903398-18-5 . Brown . Bryson.

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