Richard Buckingham

Richard Arthur Buckingham FBCS FRSA (17 July 1911 – 13 August 1994) was an English particle physicist, mathematician and computer scientist long on the staff of the University of London.

He was also a Fellow of the British Computer Society and of the Royal Society of Arts

Career After Cambridge, Buckingham's first academic post was at Queen's University Belfast, where he was an assistant lecturer in Mathematical Physics from 1935 to 1938. The same year, he took up a new post as Senior 1851 Exhibitioner at University College London, before serving in the Royal Navy's Admiralty Research Laboratory, Teddington, and in the Mine Design Department at Havant, from 1940 to 1945. After the Second World War, he became an academic of University College London, where he was a lecturer in mathematics (1945–1950), a lecturer in physics (1950–1951), and a reader in physics (1951–1957). From 1957 to 1973 he was director of the University of London's Computer Unit, which during his tenure was renamed as the Institute of Computer Science.

In 1963 Buckingham was appointed as professor of computing science, and in 1974 as professor of computer education, at Birkbeck College, London. On his retirement in 1978 he received the title of professor emeritus.

Private life In 1939 Buckingham married Christina O'Brien, and they had one son and two daughters. He died on 13 August 1994 in West Sussex.

Selected publications The Low-temperature Properties of Gaseous Helium: 2, 1941 Numerical Methods (Pitman), 1957 Information Systems Education, 1987 Papers in Proceedings of the Royal Society, Proceedings of the Physical Society, Journal of Chemical Physics, Computer Journal, and others.