A prominent researcher in numerical analysis to facilitate the use of the high-speed digital computer, Wilkinson received the Turing Award in 1970 "for his research in numerical analysis to facilitate the use of the high-speed digital computer, having received special recognition for his work in computations in linear algebra and 'backward' error analysis." Born in Strood, England, he attended the Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School in Rochester and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated top of the class.
Taking up war work in 1940, he began working on ballistics but transferred to the National Physical Laboratory in 1946, where he worked with Alan Turing on the ACE computer project. Later, his interests took him into the numerical analysis field, where Wilkinson discovered many significant algorithms.
In the same year as his Turing Award, he also gave the John von Neumann Lecture at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. The J. H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software is named in his honour.
