Working in the Scientific State: John Womersley’s Early Career

John Ronald Womersley, first superintendent of the Mathematics Division created at the United Kingdom’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in 1945, is best known to historians of computing for appointing Alan Turing to lead a project to design an electronic digital computer. Although Turing dissociated himself from the project in 1947, and Womersley left the NPL in 1950, the NPL’s Electronic Division completed the Pilot ACE computer in 1951 [10]. This machine is remembered for its unique design and excellent performance, but Womersley has received little credit for this achievement, often being dismissed as a second-rate mathematician who did not effectively lead the project he had started.