Frederic Gordon Foster (24 February 1921 – 20 December 2010)[1] was an Irish computational engineer, statistician, professor, and college dean who is widely known for devising, in 1965, a nine-digit code upon which the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is based.
A lecture on feedback control by Norbert Wiener, regarded as the originator of cybernetics, proved to be a great influence on Foster's research.
Upon completing his PhD at Magdalen, he accepted an offer to lecture on his research at the University of Manchester, where he met Alan Turing, a Bletchley Park veteran who became known as the father of computer science.
Gordon Foster developed for WH Smith, a 9 digit code which he named the Standard Book Numbering System (SBN).
He fostered a lively forward thinking postgraduate and undergraduate program, with courses highly applicable to the current statistical problems of the day.