This post is an important piece of the history of computational science at Daresbury, in the Research Council system and in the UK and European scientific community. It’s the very first Annual Report of the original Theory and Computational Science Division, founded in 1977 by Phil Burke and John Pendry. I came across this copy when looking through the archives of our department at Daresbury, and it’s quite special; it’s Phil Burke’s own copy and he wrote his name on the cover page.
The contents pretty much speak for themselves. Personally, I found the account of the mission, so to speak, of the new Division quite illuminating. As so often with these early statements of Phil and John, they have stood the test of time remarkably well. Suitably adapted to technology changes, they would work pretty well for our Scientific Computing Department in 2021, in my opinion. Also, there’s lots of real science in even this first Annual Report, backed up by an impressive list of publications. That’s certainly how I recall those early days - our work was very science-driven. That research was strongly coupled with and motivated by the collaborative structures introduced by Phil and John, notably the CCPs of course. Is that why the CCP model has proved to be so robust, even now, 44 years later? Yes!
Looking at the list of people in the Division reminds me of the many really good people we had, and of those who joined in the next couple of years. Several went on to great things in their various areas of science (some, sadly, are no longer with us). On a personal note, I was quite surprised to see my name in the list (and to find a nice summary of what I was supposed to be doing, presumably written by John). I always thought I came to Daresbury in 1979; I had completely forgotten that I had a brief prior stint in TCS as a joint post doc appointment with Bristol!
