Creator of the first graphic computer game, Douglas made important contributions in mathematical computing, computer education, and man-machine interfaces.
'Sandy' Douglas worked on EDSAC and later the Ferranti Pegasus. As a graduate student in Cambridge Douglas wrote the first graphic computer game as part of his PhD dissertation. His work in the computation in areas such as crystalography Atomic Physics are widely recognized. He built up service computing at Leeds University and established one of the earliest University Programming course at Leeds in 1957. Later Douglas became a Director of the computer consultancy CEIR, before taking the Chair of Computational Methods at The London School of Economics in October 1969. At the LSE he played an important role in getting the study of Information Systems accepted as academic discipline.
Sandy Douglas was a founder member of the British Computer Society and later the Worshipful Company of Computer Information Technologists. He became very much a Computer Statesman both in the UK where he served on the House of Commons Select Committee on Computing, and internationally with United Nations agencies and IFIP who awarded him the honour of the Silver Core.
