Needham obit

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

                Copyright 2003 Telegraph Group Limited
                     THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)

                      March 05, 2003, Wednesday

SECTION: Pg. 27

LENGTH: 783 words

HEADLINE: Professor Roger Needham Expert on computer systems at
Cambridge who set up Microsoft's first research laboratory outside
America

BODY: ROGER NEEDHAM, who died last Friday aged 68, was Professor of
Computer Systems at Cambridge University (1981-98) before becoming the
first head of Microsoft's new European research laboratory, also based
in the city.

Needham was 61 when he was approached by Microsoft to help put
together their first research facility outside America. Having started
computing at Cambridge in 1956, he had built a formidable reputation.
> From 1977 his research and teaching had taken him to Silicon Valley
for five or six weeks a year at a time of momentous changes in
computer science.

He leapt at the chance to gather together a group of computer
scientists with a remit to take risks in their research. Under his
aegis, Microsoft's laboratory grew into a flourishing centre of new
ideas. The building and the number of researchers expanded rapidly,
and Needham and his team provided the computer industry with a number
of key advances, notably in privacy, passwords and the protection of
intellectual property.

Although he spent the majority of his career at university, Needham
decided that as bureaucracy began to invade academic life he would
have more freedom working for a corporation. But he missed not having
research students, many of whom remained in contact with him.

Needham was much in demand on the lecture circuit, where he could keep
the attention of the most restless of audiences. Fond of quoting from
Napoleon, he once illustrated a lecture on computer technology by
pointing out that the Emperor, who took a library of 300 books with
him on campaign, could have stored 60 times that amount of material if
only he had had a hard disc.

Roger Michael Needham was born on February 9 1935, the only son of Len
and Mollie Needham, who met as chemistry students at Birmingham
University. He was educated at Doncaster Grammar School and won a
scholarship to Cambridge. He graduated in Mathematics and Philosophy
in 1956.

That year Needham went to work at the Cambridge Language Research
Unit, which had been funded for the purpose of carrying out research
on automatic translation. His experience there sparked what was to
become his lifelong interest in computing, and the next year he took a
diploma in Numerical Analysis and Automatic Computing. Needham
continued to work at the unit whilst researching his doctorate on the
application of digital computers to problems of classification and
grouping.

In his spare time, he and his wife built their own house - working on
site in the mornings and returning to their PhDs in the afternoons and
evenings.

In 1962 Needham joined the Mathematical Laboratory (now the Computer
Laboratory) at Cambridge as a senior research assistant. Such was the
sense of excitement in those heady days for computer science that they
would often work through the night. In 1967 Needham came up with the
idea of storing passwords with a one-way function. This is now common
practice.

The laboratory continued to expand through the 1970s, and in 1981
Needham was appointed Professor. By now the government was taking much
more interest in computer technology and Needham found he had ample
funding. He also established many contacts in California, and the
laboratory benefited greatly from the international exchange of
information about computing, a process which is now known as
"technology transfer".

A keen sailor, Needham bought an 1872 Gaff Cutter as his first boat in
1970. But it was only two years ago that he installed his first
computer at home.

Needham had a reputation as a plain speaker. In private he was an
entertaining conversationalist and, for a man with his breadth of
knowledge of computer science, remarkably tolerant of those with less
understanding.

He was always aware of the importance of humility in an academic field
that was subject to constant change, and liked to quote the British
computer scientist, Christopher Strachey, who died 27 years ago: "It
is impossible to foresee the consequences of being clever, so you try
to avoid it whenever you can." He was quick to deny that he had lived
through a revolution in information technology. "It has not happened
yet," he said in 2000, "it is only beginning."

> From 1996 to 1998 Needham was Pro-Vice Chancellor of Cambridge
University. He was awarded the Faraday Medal in 1998 and appointed CBE
in 2001.

He was the author of numerous publications including (with M V Wilkes)
The Cambridge CAP Computer and its operating system.

Needham married, in 1958, Karen Ida Boalth Sparck-Jones, whom he met
while they were both students. She has been Professor of Computers and
Information at the Microsoft laboratory since 1999. She survives him.


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