by Mary Croarken
© Oxford University Press 2004 All rights reserved
Womersley, John Ronald (1907-1958), mathematician, was born on 20 June 1907 in Worrall Street, Morely, Yorkshire, son of George William Womersley, grocer, and his wife, Ruth (formerly Gledhill). He was educated at Morely grammar school (1917-25) before going to Imperial College, London, where in 1928 he gained a first-class degree in mathematics. He spent two further years at Imperial, engaged on hydrodynamics research and gaining a diploma of Imperial College in 1930, then joined the British Cotton Industry Research Association at the Shirley Institute in Manchester to work on the application of mathematical methods to a range of textile problems. There Womersley became interested in the application of mathematical statistics to industrial problems and in statistical quality control. In 1936 he collaborated with D. R. Hartree to devise a method for solving partial differential equations suitable for application to the differential analyser which Hartree had built at Manchester University. This was Womersley's first introduction to large-scale computing machines.
In 1937 Womersley joined the armaments research department, Woolwich. As part of his work on internal ballistics he initiated a statistical analysis of cordite proof records which led to changes in charge adjustments made to certain weapons. During this time he built a small differential analyser for ballistics calculations which was destroyed during the war. In 1944 he joined the British Association mathematical tables committee, serving until 1948.
With the increase in mass production during the Second World War, and because of his interest in applying statistics to industrial problems, Womersley was asked in July 1942 to set up a Ministry of Supply advisory service on statistical quality control (later known as SR 17). By the end of the war this organization had a staff of approximately forty statisticians and did much to introduce sampling inspection methods to British industry.
Following his success at SR 17 Womersley was offered the post of first superintendent of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) mathematics division at Teddington, Middlesex, in 1944. This division had two main roles: first to provide a mathematical service, a task similar to that performed by SR 17; and second to build an electronic computer, a task for which Womersley was perhaps less well qualified.
Before taking up his post at the NPL Womersley was given security clearance to travel to the United States to become one of the first overseas visitors to the ENIAC project and to hear about the first proposals to build an electronic stored program computer. He was also involved in one of the first international computer conferences, which took place in the United States in October 1945. Alan Turing joined the mathematics division and designed the ACE computer, but Womersley seems to have failed to grasp the differences between Turing's radical ideas and the American proposals. Consequently the building of ACE was delayed and in 1947 Turing left the project. A prototype machine, the Pilot ACE, was operational by late 1950 (significantly behind the computers at Cambridge and Manchester) but by then Womersley had left the NPL.
In September 1950 Womersley accepted a post with BTM Ltd (a forerunner of ICL Ltd) and his appointment led to the development of the HEC range of machines based on the work of A. D. Booth at Birkbeck College, London. There is some dispute as to whether Womersley's appointment with BTM was successful and he left the company in 1954 to go back to mathematics. In that year Womersley worked with a team from St Bartholomew's Hospital on a mathematical investigation into blood flow in arteries which resulted in papers published in the Journal of Physiology (1954 and 1955) and in the Philosophical Magazine (1955). He continued this work when he took up a mathematical post in 1955 with the US Air Force at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio.
Womersley was a tall, heavily built, and generally well liked man. He was always proud of his Yorkshire origins and never completely lost his accent despite living away from Yorkshire for all of his working life. He returned to Britain in 1957 for a serious operation from which he never fully recovered. He died at University Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, on 7 March 1958 leaving a widow, Jean (formerly Jordan), of whom nothing is known. The couple had three daughters, Barbara, Ruth, and Marion. Although not a brilliant mathematician, Womersley's real skill was his ability to foresee how mathematical techniques could be used to solve problems and to set up organizations to exploit those techniques.
MARY CROARKEN
Sources
F. Smithies, Journal of the London Mathematical Society, 34 (1959), 370-72
The Times (19 March 1958), 13
C. G. Darwin, Nature, 181 (1958), 1240
personnel records, National Physical Laboratory, Teddington
M. G. Croarken, Early scientific computing in Britain (1990)
M. Campbell-Kelly, ICL--a business and technical history (1989)
private information (2004)
H. H. Goldstine, The computer from Pascal to von Neumann (1972)
G. A. Barnard and R. L. Plackett, 'Statistics in the United Kingdom, 1939-45', A celebration of statistics, ed. A. C. Atkinson and S. E. Fienberg (1985), 41-5
d. cert.
Wealth at death
apparently widow applied to British government for financial help after his death: private information (2004)
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/52469]
GO TO THE OUP ARTICLE (Sign-in required)