Reminiscences of Christopher Strachey

摘要

My personal knowledge of Christopher Strachey came primarily from the time when I worked for him as a mathematical assistant at the National Research Development Corporation, in Tilney Street in London. NRDC had been set up to provide financial support for promising inventions, the Corporation gaining its income from a return on those which were successful. I was employed there between about February and July 1956. It was, in fact, my first proper job. I recall that I was trying to write up my Cambridge PhD thesis at the time, and I imagined that the job would allow me time to complete the write-up of my thesis. As it turned out, the job took my interest much more than I was expecting, and I did virtually nothing on the thesis until I left the job in the summer, prior to taking up an assistant lectureship at Bedford College London in the autumn of the same year. For about six years following this, if my memory serves me correctly, Strachey employed me as a Consultant at NRDC, so I kept up the contact with him, and we later renewed our friendship when we were both Professors at Oxford in the 1970s.