Philip Woodward - Achievements in Mathematics and Engineering

Achievements in Mathematics and Engineering

Philip Woodward's career in the Scientific Civil Service spanned four decades. He was responsible for one of the UK's first electronic computers (TREAC) followed by the UK's first solid state computer (RREAC). He is the author of the book Probability and Information Theory, with Applications to Radar.

During World War II, Philip Woodward developed a mathematical beam-shaping technique for radar antennae, which was later to become standard in the analysis of communication signals. His principal achievement in radar was to evaluate the ambiguities inherent in all radar signals and to show how Bayesian probability can be used as part of the design process to eliminate all but the wanted information the echoes might contain.

In 1956, Woodward’s work on radar information theory led Nobel Prizewinning physicist John H. Van Vleck to invite him to give a postgraduate course on random processes at Harvard University. Professor E. T. Jaynes in his posthumously published book recognized Woodward as having been "many years ahead of his time" and as having shown "prophetic insight into what was to come" in the application of probability and statistics to the recovery of data from noisy samples. In the 1960s Philip Woodward's computer software team in Malvern provided the Royal Radar Establishment with the ALGOL 68R compiler, the world's first implementation of the programming language ALGOL 68, and provided the armed services with their first standard high-level programming language, Coral 66, for the small military computers of the day.

His academic posts have included Honorary Professor in Electrical Engineering at the University of Birmingham and Visiting Professor in Cybernetics at the University of Reading. When in 2000 the Woodward Building was opened by Sir John Chisholm at DERA (now privatized as QinetiQ), guests were given complimentary clocks as souvenirs of the occasion and of Philip Woodward's horological interests.

In June 2005, the Royal Academy of Engineering gave Woodward its first Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing him as an outstanding pioneer of Radar and for his work in precision mechanical horology. In 2009 he received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Dennis J. Picard Medal for Radar Technologies and Applications: “for pioneering work of fundamental importance in radar waveform design, including the Woodward Ambiguity Function, the standard tool for waveform and matched filter analysis.”