Donald Davies

Donald Watts Davies, CBE, FRS (7 June 1924 – 28 May 2000) was a Welsh computer scientist who independently developed the concept of packet switching in computer networking, after Paul Baran in the United States had completed his pioneering work. The ARPANET project credited Davies primarily for his influence.

Career history

Davies was born in Treorchy in the Rhondda Valley, Wales. His father, a clerk at a coalmine, died a few months later, and his mother took Donald and his twin sister back to her home town of Portsmouth, where he went to school.

He received a BSc degree in physics (1943) at Imperial College London, and then joined the war effort working as an assistant to Klaus Fuchs on the nuclear weapons Tube Alloys project at Birmingham University. He then returned to Imperial taking a first class degree in mathematics (1947); he was also awarded the Lubbock memorial Prize as the outstanding mathematician of his year.

In 1955, he married Diane Burton; they had a daughter and two sons.

Donald Davies (disambiguation)

Donald Davies may refer to:

See also

Donald Davies (bishop)

Archibald Donald Davies (April 15, 1920 – October 16, 2011) was an American Anglican bishop. He was the fourth Episcopal bishop of Dallas and subsequently the first Episcopal bishop of Fort Worth. Davies was a founder of the Evangelical and Catholic Mission. He later founded the Episcopal Missionary Church, after which he became Archbishop and Primate of the Christian Episcopal Church (XnEC).

References