Brian Flowers' career interacted with the Atlas Laboratory in a number of ways. From 1944-46 he was a member of the Anglo-Canadian Atomic Energy Project (Tube Alloys) project from 1944-46 as were many other computing pioneers. He had a period at Harwell between 1946 and 1950 doing research in nuclear physics and atomic energy. After a period at Birmingham University he returned to Head Theoretical Physics Division at Harwell in the period 1952-58 when computing was starting at Harwell. He then moved to Manchester University before becoming head of the Science Research Council in the period 1967-73 when the Atlas Laboratory was at full potential.
In 1964, he took over from Sir William Penney as Chairman of the NIRNS Atlas Computer Committee and ran its successor, the SRC Atlas Computer Committee until 1966 when he became Chairman of SRC.
In 1965 he chaired the Working Group that produced the report A report of a Joint Working Group on Computers for Research which has ever since been called the Flowers Report . This report was endorsed by the government and was responsible for ensuring a massive injection of computing power into UK universities.
The Atlas Computer Laboratory was responsible for enabling universities to establish that need. The Flowers Report was responsible also for removing the uniqueness from the Atlas Computer Laboratory of being the only source of large computing resources. The establishment of the Regional Centres contributed eventually to the demise of ACL.
Brian Flowers was always a great supporter of computing and the Atlas Computer Laboratory. He had the privilege of pressing the button to switch off Atlas for the last time and said, I am now about to conduct the computer, not the Laboratory, across the river Styx.
In 1998, he was involved in the 50th anniversary celebrations at Manchester University of the first stored program computer, the Manchester Baby machine. Lord Flowers and the Manchester Vice-Chancellor Professor Martin Harris presented honorary degrees to Chris Burton, Tom Kilburn, Basil de Ferranti and Mike Brady.
