Arthur Frederick Parker-Rhodes (21 November 1914 – 2 March 1987) was an English linguist, plant pathologist, computer scientist, mathematician, mystic, and mycologist, who also introduced original theories in physics.
His personal interest, however, was in the larger fungi, particularly agarics (mushrooms and toadstools), and he was a familiar figure at forays of the British Mycological Society in the 1940s and 1950s.
[7] Subsequently, he produced papers studying the kinetics of fairy rings and a series surveying the larger fungi of Skokholm, an island off the western coast of Wales.
The unit was said to house "an extraordinary collection of eccentrics" engaged in research on language and computing, including information retrieval.
[8] Parker-Rhodes' colleagues at CLRU included Roger Needham, Karen Spärck Jones, Ted Bastin, Stuart Linney, and Yorick Wilks.
[1] Parker-Rhodes influenced mathematical metaphysics with his book[11] relating to the Combinatorial Hierarchy's remarkable correspondences to the dimensionless scaling laws of physics.
His pamphlet, Wholesight: The Spirit Quest (1978), that explored mythical tales and parables in an attempt to bring science and religion together.