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Further reading □ Permanent staff □ OverviewBALDWIN, JohnBAYLIS, MikeBELL, AlexCHURCHHOUSE, BobELDER, Mike and MACHIN, PellaFOSSEY, BartFRANCIS, AlanGALLOP, JulianHAILSTONE, JimHAYES, BillHOCKEY, SusanHOPGOOD, BobHOWLETT, JackLOACH, BernardMOYE, KenROBERTS, RobbieRUSSELL, DonSAUNDERS, VicTHOMAS, Judy □ Fellows □ ATKIN, OliverDORAN, JamesGOOD, JackGRANT, IanHODSON, FrankHUNT, GarryLEECH, JohnMCKAY, JohnMELTZER, BernardWALSH, Joan □ Memorials and obituaries □ On-siteElsewhereCelebrating the life of Jack Howlett
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Further reading


Permanent staff
OverviewBALDWIN, JohnBAYLIS, MikeBELL, AlexCHURCHHOUSE, BobELDER, Mike and MACHIN, PellaFOSSEY, BartFRANCIS, AlanGALLOP, JulianHAILSTONE, JimHAYES, BillHOCKEY, SusanHOPGOOD, BobHOWLETT, JackLOACH, BernardMOYE, KenROBERTS, RobbieRUSSELL, DonSAUNDERS, VicTHOMAS, Judy
Fellows
ATKIN, OliverDORAN, JamesGOOD, JackGRANT, IanHODSON, FrankHUNT, GarryLEECH, JohnMCKAY, JohnMELTZER, BernardWALSH, Joan
Memorials and obituaries
On-siteElsewhereCelebrating the life of Jack Howlett

Dr John Baldwin

John Baldwin, June 1969

John Baldwin, June 1969
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© UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council

John Baldwin joined the Lab in 1965 having completed a doctorate in Chemistry at the University of Sussex and, having used the Atlas service for a short period in the course of his own work using the Hartran version of Fortran so ably supported by Barbara Stokoe and Bart Fossey, applied for a job the Lab and was appointed in the September.

Being a chemist, John was assumed to know about all branches of the subject and was quickly assigned to liaise with those chemists around the UK wishing to use the Lab. The notable group which soon emerged as needing significant amounts of computation were the crystallographers, and (despite John not actually having any crystallography experience at all) it quickly became clear that, rather than developing any special programs ourselves, it would be worth examining what was available from elsewhere with a view to their implementation on Atlas. The need for machine independent Fortran was paramount, or at least a dialect thereof which was receptive to our version (Hartran Note 4). The Oak Ridge series of programs (including ORFLS, ORFFE, ORTEP) was a noteworthy candidate, but then our attention was drawn to X-RAY63 a series of linked programs developed by Professor Jim Stewart at the University of Maryland and which not only included some of the Oak Ridge algorithms but all coded with machine/compiler independencies a principal consideration. This proved to be an ideal way to proceed; in operation it was very popular, and the service to Crystallographers was widely used from about 1964 onwards most notably by groups at London, Cardiff, York, Sheffield and East Anglia. Later Judith Thomas was appointed to be the special support person for this specialism. (This work is briefly included in the Crystallography section.

For the academic year 1969-70, John was seconded (like Don Russell in the immediately preceding year) to work in the US. John had been invited to work with Jim Stewart at College Park Maryland on updates to the (now dateless) XRAY system and association led to Jim coming a few years to Atlas Lab as a Visiting Fellow.

At this time the nature of computing was changing, and it was readily acknowledged that multiple-access was essential, and the Lab embarked upon a project to provide this on Atlas. Front-ending with a Rank Xerox (formerly SDS) Sigma 2 machine was the chosen way, with a large fixed disc acting as the major 'data highway'. So John joined Eric on what was called the Chimp project (Chilton Multiaccess Project), programming the Sigma 2 (see picture above). John's involvement in that work has been written up in two papers ( see the Sigma 2 section of the site).

John left the Lab in September 1972 to join Bob Churchhouse at University College Cardiff, first acting as Computer Manager of the ICL System 4-70, and two years later taking over from Bob as Director of the service. The experience gained on the Chimp Project was certainly helpful as Cardiff, in association with others in the south west (Bristol, Bath, Exeter, UWIST) worked to form the South West Universities Computer Network, experience from which was important to the Janet project. Subsequently, in 1987 when UCC and UWIST embarked upon merger and having been ordained in 1983 to the Anglican priesthood (whilst continuing his work at UCC), John left the university. Very quickly he got involved in administrative computing for The Church in Wales, starting and building up their IT service in the provincial office in Cardiff. John retired in 2004.

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