This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of James Hardy Wilkinson, FRS. Wilkinson developed the theory and practice of backward error analysis for floating-point computation, and developed, analyzed, and implemented in software many algorithms in numerical linear algebra. While much has changed since his untimely passing in 1986, we still rely on the analytic and algorithmic foundations laid by Wilkinson.
This micro website about Wilkinson, set up by Sven Hammarling and me, contains links to all kinds of information about Wilkinson, including audio and video recordings of him.
With Sven Hammarling and Françoise Tisseur, I am organizing a conference Advances in Numerical Linear Algebra: Celebrating the Centenary of the Birth of James H. Wilkinson at the University of Manchester, May 29-30, 2019. Among the 13 invited speakers are several who knew or worked with Wilkinson. As well as focusing on recent developments and future challenges for numerical linear algebra, the talks will include reminiscences about Wilkinson and discuss his legacy.
Contributed talks and posters are welcome (deadline April 1, 2019) and some funding is available to support the attendance of early career researchers and PhD students.
Nick Higham 