Brian Randell (born 1936) is a British computer scientist, and Emeritus Professor at the School of Computing, Newcastle University, United Kingdom. He specialises in research into software fault tolerance and dependability, and is a noted authority on the early pre-1950 history of computing hardware. Biography Randell was employed at English Electric from 1957 to 1964 where he was working on compilers. His work on ALGOL 60 is particularly well known, including the development of the Whetstone compiler for the English Electric KDF9, an early stack machine. In 1964, he joined IBM, where he worked at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center on high performance computer architectures and also on operating system design methodology. In May 1969, he became a Professor of Computing Science at the then named University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where he has worked since then in the area of software fault tolerance and dependability. He is a member of the Special Interest Group on Computers, Information and Society (SIGCIS) of the Society for the History of Technology CIS, and a founding member of the Editorial Board of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing journal. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (2008). He was, until 1969, a member of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) IFIP Working Group 2.1 (WG2.1) on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi, which specified, maintains, and supports the programming languages ALGOL 60 and ALGOL 68. He is also a founding member of IFIP WG2.3 on Programming Methodology, and of IFIP WG10.4 on Dependability and Fault Tolerance. He is married (to Liz, a teacher of French) and has four children. Work Brian Randell's main research interests are in the field of computer science, specifically on system dependability and fault tolerance. His interest in the history of computing was started by coming across the then almost unknown work of Percy Ludgate. This was over thirty years ago, when he was preparing an inaugural lecture, and led to his producing the book: "The Origins of Computers". This triggered his further investigation of the Colossus wartime code-breaking machines. Bletchley Park In 1972, Randell wrote to Prime Minister Ted Heath regarding the wartime status of Bletchley Park, and obtained the first-ever admission of the existence of the wartime organisation, let alone its impact. Subsequently, the role of Bletchley Park and its main outstation at Eastcote, in reducing the length of World War II,