Gordon Foster: GORDON FOSTER, who died recently aged 89, wasprofessor of statistics at Trinity College Dublin and a former deanof the faculty of engineering and system sciences.
Before joining Trinity, he held the chair of computationalmethods at the London School of Economics.
Among his many achievements was to devise the nine-digit codeupon which the International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, isbased. This was on foot of a decision of the Publishers Associationin 1966 to carry out an inquiry into the feasibility of the UK booktrade adopting a standard system of numbering all book titles.
A 10-digit ISBN format was adopted by the InternationalOrganisation for Standardisation in 1970; since 2007 ISBNs havecontained 13 digits.
Born in Belfast in 1921, he was one of three children of RobertFoster and his wife Florence Evelyn (nee Magee). Educated at theRoyal Belfast Academical Institution, he then studied mathematics atQueen's University Belfast.
From there he was recruited by MI6 as a code-breaker at BletchleyPark. He remembered it as routine work. He and his colleaguesscanned encrypted messages looking for human error and in time cameto recognise the style of individual encrypters.
He remembered being trained by the Home Guard how to polish, butnot fire, rifles. He disliked the horse meat served at meal times,and on visits to Belfast brought tea, which he traded for beefsteak.
After the war, he continued his studies at Magdalen College,Oxford. A lecture by Norbert Wiener, regarded as the originator ofcybernetics, on feedback control proved to be hugely influential onhis research.
After completing his DPhil he was invited to lecture on hisresearch at the University of Manchester. There he met Alan Turing,another Bletchley Park veteran and widely known as the father ofcomputer science, who showed him the Manchester Mark I computer,which he had worked on.
In 1952 Foster joined the staff of the London School ofEconomics, first as an assistant lecturer in statistics, thenlecturer and reader. In 1964, he was appointed to the chair ofcomputational methods. It was at the LSE that he helped to developoperations research as an academic discipline.
He became professor of statistics at TCD in 1967. There hesucceeded in promoting statistical analysis and computerapplications in many schools and departments. And he built up hisown department with a strong postgraduate as well as undergraduateprogramme. He also launched outreach to industry and the publicservice through the setting up of the statistics and operationsresearch laboratory.
In addition, he initiated a systems development programme, an MScprogramme for students from developing countries, in 1977. Hederived much satisfaction and enjoyment from mentoring his overseasstudents, and visiting field projects in the collaboratinguniversities.
He headed a number of international projects and worked onevaluation studies of the socio-economic effects of informatics. Heacted as consultant to the UN body Unido in developing its policy onthe role of informatics in Third World development.
In 1997, he founded the Informatics and Social DevelopmentResearch Institute (IDI). He directed the IDI Trinet project inorder to facilitate connections between remote areas around theworld using low-cost technology. The aim of the project, he said,was to ensure that the information superhighway could "lead up a fewmuddy lanes as well".
Having researched low earth orbit satellites, messages wereuploaded and downloaded from satellite to radio aerial, and on tocomputers via a terminal node controller - the equivalent of amodem.
The ground station also had a gateway to the internet so thatmessages received from the satellites could be transferred directlyon to the internet and vice versa.
One of the most dramatic connections was made in 1995 arisingfrom the Ebola virus outbreak in Zaire when two doctors at Vangahospital managed to contact Foster's ground station in Dublin.
Contact was made with the Centers for Disease Control andPrevention, Atlanta, ensuring an exchange of vital informationthroughout the outbreak.
Foster published many reports and technical papers on probabilitytheory, applied statistics, computer systems performance modelling,information systems design, information technology assessment,operations research and management science.
In 1968 he delivered the annual Economic and Social ResearchInstitute's Geary Lecture, Computers, Statistics and Planning -Systems or Chaos?in which he discussed the computing needs ofIreland and anticipated the software export industry. He was electeda fellow of TCD in 1971.
Former TCD vice-provost and pro-chancellor David Spearmanremembers him as a "committed and loyal member of the college" whowas "well regarded and respected as a colleague".
Faculty colleagues remember him as a "kind and gentle man, with agentle sense of humour", who "could be tough and determined whennecessary", and as an "informatics visionary".
A member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), hisinterests included sustainability, global risk management andlateral thinking.
As a young man he was a boxer. He also enjoyed sailing, playingthe violin, travel and literature.
His wife Gwendolen (nee Hollander), son Robert, daughtersMichelle and Sophie, daughter-in-law Anne, son-in-law Iain Hutchesonand five grandchildren survive him.
Frederic Gordon Foster: born February 24th, 1921; died December20th, 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment