The department was founded as the Mathematical Laboratory under the leadership of John Lennard-Jones on 14 May 1937, though it did not get properly established until after World War II.

Members have been involved in the creation of many successful UK IT companies such as Acorn,[8] ARM,[9] nCipher and XenSource.

Former staff include: The lab has been led by: Members have made impact in computers, Turing machines, microprogramming, subroutines, computer networks, mobile protocols, security, programming languages, kernels, OS, security, virtualisation, location badge systems, etc.

[23] Some cited examples of successful companies are ARM, Autonomy, Aveva, CSR and Domino.

One common factor they share is that key staff or founder members are "drenched in university training and research".

[24] The Cambridge Computer Lab Ring was praised for its "tireless work" by Andy Hopper in 2012, at its tenth anniversary dinner.