Australian Dictionary of Biography

Trevor Pearcey, 1984

Monash University Archives

Trevor Pearcey (1919–1998), computer scientist and mathematician, was born on 5 March 1919 at Woolwich, London, elder child of Edward David Pearcey, a journeyman cooper with the Royal Engineers, and his wife Dorothy Annie, née Kirton. Educated at the Strand School, South London, from 1938 Trevor studied physics and mathematics at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London (BSc Hons, 1940; ARCS, 1940), graduating with first-class honours in physics. Unable to pursue doctoral studies in Britain during World War II, he worked as an applied mathematician at the Air Defence Research Development Establishment, Christchurch, Hampshire, and from 1942 at the Radar Research and Development Establishment, Malvern, Worcestershire. In a paper published in 1946, he established the concept of the Pearcey integral relating to wave propagation. During the war he also met Douglas Hartree, professor of mathematical physics at the University of Manchester, who inspired his interest in digital computing. On 18 August 1945 at the Upton upon Severn register office, he married Mary Elizabeth Long, a physics graduate from the University of Wales who was a technical assistant at the RRDE. The couple were to have three children: Frances, David, and Owen.

In January 1946 Pearcey moved to Sydney to head the mathematical section of the division of radiophysics, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (from 1949 the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, or CSIRO). He was noted for his drive and for his many ideas to meet the demand for computations undertaken by the division. Already aware of electromechanical computation through his work in England and his inspection in 1945 of the ‘Harvard Mark I’ calculator in the United States of America, he commenced the logical design for an Australian project. From 1947 he collaborated with Maston Beard, an engineer in the division of radiophysics, to build Australia’s first general-purpose, electronic, digital computer with stored programming. It was among a small group of first-generation computers built anywhere in the world. Designated CSIR Mark 1, the computer ran its first program in 1949. In 1950 it was programmed to play music, the first known use of a computer for this purpose. The following year it was exhibited at the University of Sydney for the first conference on Australian computing. The conference also featured an electromechanical differential analyser, an analogue computer developed by Pearcey’s CSIR colleague David Myers. It was a watershed moment that marked the introduction of digital computing in Australia.

During the 1950s Pearcey became frustrated by a lack of support for computing at the CSIRO, which he later attributed in part to its ‘traditional link with primary industry’ (Bennett et al. 1994, 29). The CSIRO transferred CSIR Mark 1 to the University of Melbourne in 1955, where it was renamed CSIRAC (CSIR Automatic Computer) and recommissioned in 1956. Pearcey took leave of absence the following year to work for his former employer in England, now renamed the Royal Radar Establishment. Returning to CSIRO in 1959, he joined the division of mathematical statistics, based at the University of Melbourne. There he planned a computing laboratory with an integrated network across Australia, implemented from 1963 under the name CSIRONET. He also collaborated on other projects, including the CIRRUS computer at the University of Adelaide. In 1964 he moved to the CSIRO’s new computing research section in Canberra. A stint in the private sector followed: from 1968 to 1970 he worked for Control Data Corporation in Minneapolis, United States, and from 1971 to 1972 for Control Data Australia Pty Ltd in Melbourne.

Alongside his usual work commitments, Pearcey participated in computing education throughout his career. He presented a pioneering course on the theory of computation at the University of Sydney (1947–52) and later lectured on numerical methods and computing systems to mathematics students at the University of Melbourne (1959–63). In 1972 he was appointed head of the department of electronic data processing at the Caulfield Institute of Technology. He had a major impact on the direction of computing education at CIT, although it took some time for him to be accepted by the other staff as his academic lecturing style was ill-suited to the requirements of CIT’s vocational courses in applied computing. In 1979 he became dean of the school of computing and information systems, and in 1984 he was appointed foundation dean of the faculty of technology at the Chisholm Institute of Technology, which combined CIT and the State College of Victoria, Frankston. He retired the next year. The Chisholm Institute later became a campus of Monash University, where the Pearcey Centre for Computing was named in his honour.

Shy and retiring, but nonetheless insightful and dryly humorous, Pearcey was a visionary man whose ideas and innovations led Australia into the modern computer age. His understanding of the potential of digital computing was remarkable: as early as February 1948 he envisaged computers providing an ‘automatic encyclopaedic service operated through the national teleprinter or telephone system’ (Pearcey 1948, xx). An active participant in the establishment in 1966 of the Australian Computer Society (president 1967–68), he published papers on a range of computing, physics, and mathematical subjects. He submitted a three-volume collection of his papers to the University of Melbourne for which he was awarded a doctorate of science in 1972.

Having divorced his first wife in 1975, Pearcey married Norma Mary Hannah, née Lang, on 19 October 1976. He became an Australian citizen in 1984. In retirement he maintained varied research interests, including chaos theory, and wrote A History of Australian Computing (1988), in which he expressed his disappointment at the lack of official support for the development of Australian-led innovation in computing technology. Survived by his wife, and the three children of his first marriage, he died of a heart attack on 27 January 1998 at Mornington, Victoria, and was cremated. His contributions were acknowledged later that year by the creation of the Pearcey Foundation and the Pearcey medal for outstanding achievement by an Australian in the information and communications technology industry.