Audrey Bates (programmer)

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.^[3][2]

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.^[2][5]

In 1952, Bates went to work on the FERUT, the Ferranti Mark I installed at the University of Toronto.^[2] 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.^[1] 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.^[7]