Michael Howard Kay

Education Michael Kay is the son of Ronald Kay (1920-2019) and Alma Brigitte Kay (née Albert) (1924-2019). His father was English, his mother German; he was born in Germany but has always lived in England.

Kay was educated at Salesian College in Farnborough, and at the University of Cambridge where he read Natural Sciences as an undergraduate student at Trinity College, Cambridge. He gained his Doctor of Philosophy degree while working in the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge under the supervision of Maurice Wilkes on databases.

Career Kay spent over twenty years (1977-2001) with the British computer manufacturer International Computers Limited (ICL). He was appointed an ICL Fellow in 1990. On leaving ICL, he worked for three years with Software AG He has previously been involved in GedML: Genealogical Data in XML.

Publications Kay is the author of the book XSLT: Programmer's Reference by Wrox Press and several other books and papers on software engineering. He lives and works in Reading, and a regular speaker at the XML Summer School in Oxford and Balisage Markup conference.

Kay discusses his views on the role of XML, XSLT, open standards, and open source software in a 2022 interview with Yegor Bugayenko .