John G.F. Francis (born 1934) is an English computer scientist, who in 1961 published the QR algorithm for computing the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of matrices,[1] which has been named as one of the ten most important algorithms of the twentieth century.
[2][3] The algorithm was also proposed independently by Vera N. Kublanovskaya of the Soviet Union in the same year.
[5] By 1962, Francis had left the field of numerical analysis, and subsequently had no idea of the impact his work on the QR algorithm had had, until re-contacted by Gene Golub and Frank Uhlig in 2007, by which time he was retired and living in Hove, England (near Brighton).
[5] Still in good health, he was the opening speaker at a mini-symposium that marked 50 years of the QR algorithm, held at the 23rd Biennial Conference on Numerical Analysis in Glasgow in June 2009.
[6] Francis was awarded a University of Sussex honorary doctorate in July 2015.