Name: David John Wheeler

Born: February 9, 1927, in Birmingham, England

Death: December 13, 2004 (Age: 77)

  • Computer scientist who completed the world’s first PhD in computer science in 1951.
  • Known for his work on Burrows-Wheeler transform and the Wheeler Jump.
  • Credited the subroutine (which they called the closed subroutine), because of which jump to subroutine instruction is often called Wheeler Jump.
  • Designer of WAKE and the co-designer of the TEA and XTEA encryption algorithms.

Significant publications

  • The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer (1951).

Honors and awards

  • Fellow of the Royal Society (1981).
  • Inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (1994).
  • Computer History Museum Fellow Award recipient (2003).