David Fielding Hartley FBCS (born 14 September 1937)[1] is a computer scientist and Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.

[citation needed] As a member of the staff of Cambridge University's Mathematical Laboratory, he was joint author, with David Barron, John Buxton, Eric Nixon, and Christopher Strachey, of the early high-level programming language CPL.

[citation needed] The service had been founded as the Mathematical Laboratory under the leadership of John Lennard-Jones in 1937, although it did not become properly established until after World War II when Maurice Wilkes became Director.

He learnt about electronic computation, reading John von Neumann's First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC[9] and attending the final two weeks of the Moore School Lectures.

[citation needed] From 1994 to 1997 he was Chief Executive of the United Kingdom Education and Research Networking Association (UKERNA) whose objectives were to take responsibility for the UK academic community's networking programme, and to further opportunities with other communities, including industry.

From 1997 to 2002, Dr Hartley was Executive Director of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre[15] which maintains the largest searchable database of experimentally-determined small molecule crystal structures.

Dr Hartley maintains strong ties with the University of Cambridge where he continues to be a Fellow of Clare College and an Honorary Member of the Computer Laboratory.