01 · A life in computing
The person behind the work
Maurice Wilkes led the Cambridge team that built EDSAC, an early practical computer with instructions stored in memory. He also helped establish reusable program libraries with David Wheeler and Stanley Gill. His later work included microprogramming, which organized processor control through stored sequences of simpler operations. His career joined the construction of working machines with methods that made them easier to program.
The contribution, explained
Maurice Wilkes led the construction of EDSAC at Cambridge, which ran its first programs in 1949. Instructions could be held in memory rather than set up by rewiring a machine for each task. Wilkes, David Wheeler and Stanley Gill also showed how a library of subroutines could make programming a practical, cumulative activity.
Why it matters
Stored programs and reusable routines became central habits of computing: change the instructions, keep the machine, and build on existing work.