Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes (26 June 1913 – 29 November 2010[11]) was an English computer scientist who designed and helped build the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), one of the earliest stored program computers, and who invented microprogramming, a method for using stored-program logic to operate the control unit of a central processing unit's circuits.

[15] He was appointed to a junior faculty position of the University of Cambridge, through which he was involved in the establishment of a computing laboratory.

One day Leslie Comrie visited Wilkes and lent him a copy of John von Neumann's prepress description of the EDVAC, a successor to the ENIAC[17][18] under construction by Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering.

[19] During the five-day return voyage to England, Wilkes sketched out in some detail the logical structure of the machine which would become EDSAC.

Since his laboratory had its own funding, he was immediately able to start work on a small practical machine, EDSAC (for "Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator"),[8] once back at Cambridge.

In 1950, along with David Wheeler, Wilkes used EDSAC to solve a differential equation relating to gene frequencies in a paper by Ronald Fisher.

Microprogramming was first described at the University of Manchester Computer Inaugural Conference in 1951,[21] then expanded and published in IEEE Spectrum in 1955.

[citation needed] This concept was implemented for the first time in EDSAC 2,[9] which also used multiple identical "bit slices" to simplify design.

He received the Turing Award in 1967, with the following citation: "Professor Wilkes is best known as the builder and designer of the EDSAC, the first computer with an internally stored program.

In 1968 he received the Harry H. Goode Memorial Award, with the following citation: "For his many original achievements in the computer field, both in engineering and software, and for his contributions to the growth of professional society activities and to international cooperation among computer professionals.

[37] In 1980, he retired from his professorships and post as the head of the Computer Laboratory and joined the central engineering staff of Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard, Massachusetts, US.

"[38] In 2002, Wilkes moved back to the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, as an emeritus professor.

It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that "hesitating at the angles of stairs" the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs.