Audrey Bates

Margery Audrey Bates (Clayton Wallis) (1928–2014) was a British-American computer programmer who, in 1948, wrote the earliest program for lambda calculus calculations on the Manchester Mark I computer.

Career Bates graduated with a First in Mathematics from University of Manchester in the summer of 1949. She was taken on as a research student by Alan Turing, and shared an office with him and Cicely Popplewell. In 1950 Bates submitted an MSc thesis entitled "The mechanical solution of a problem in Church's Lambda calculus". This thesis documents a successful attempt to carry out higher-order logical reasoning on the extremely primitive Manchester Mark I electronic computer.

In 1952, Bates went to work on the FERUT, the Ferranti Mark I installed at the University of Toronto.

In 1979, Bates was working as a 'futurist' at a US military think tank.

Personal life Bates married twice and had four children. her second husband was Leigh Clayton (1927–2024) and it was under the name of Clayton that Bates published her later work.