Brian Wynne Oakley, (10 October 1927 – 17 August 2012) was a British civil servant and industrialist who took a leading role in the area of information technology, especially the 1980s Alvey Programme.
Career Military service and education In World War II, Oakley served with the Royal Signals as a subaltern. He then studied science at Exeter College, Oxford.Honorary Graduates — Brian Wynne Oakley, CBE, University of Essex, UK, 9 July 1998.
Information technology In 1950, Oakley joined the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) where he undertook research in telecommunications and civilian applications of military research. He then worked in Whitehall as a civil servant, joining the Ministry of Technology under the Harold Wilson government in 1969. Subsequently, he became the chief official of the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC).
Oakley was director of the United Kingdom Alvey Programme (1983–87), a British government-sponsored research programme for projects in the area of information technology, initiated as a reaction to the Japanese Fifth generation computer project.Brian Oakley and Kenneth Owen, Alvey: Britain's Strategic Computing Initiative, MIT Press, 1990. .Martin Campbell-Kelly, Review of Alvey: Britain's Strategic Computing Initiative, Business History Review, Vol. 64, No. 3, pages 570–572, Autumn, 1990. JSTOR. He went on to be chairman of the software company Logica. He chaired the managing board of the Computer Centre of the University of London, a major UK supercomputing centre, and was a director of the European Initiative for Quantum Computing.
From 1988 to 1989, Oakley was president of the British Computer Society.BCS Past Presidents , British Computer Society, UK. In 1991, on hearing that British Telecom planned to dispose of its site at Bletchley Park for housing, together with Tony Sale, he helped to save the site, establish the Bletchley Park Trust, and became a director of the Trust. He was chairman of the Computer Conservation Society from 1996 to 2000.
Awards and recognition Oakley was a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1981 Birthday Honours. He received honorary doctorates from Sheffield Hallam University (1994)Honorary Awards , Sheffield Hallam University, UK. and the University of Essex (1998).
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