L. Mike Delves, with an MSc from New Zealand and a DPhil from Oxford, came to the University of Sussex in 1966-67 as a Research Fellow in Numerical Analysis and Computing. From 1967-68 he was Reader in Computational Mathematics. By 1973 he had left for the University of Liverpool. He died on 13 February 2011.

The following obituary first appeared on the website of the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG), and is re-published here by kind permission of the author.

We are sorry to learn of the death of Prof L. M. Delves. As a professor of Computational Mathematics at Liverpool University he contributed to the Numerical Algorithms Group in several ways. He served on the NAG Council of Management for a number of years, helping steer NAG as a Company Limited by Guarantee.

He also served on the NAG Technical Policy Committee, the senior body advising NAG on its product line, where his background in physics and general interest In computation made his advice invaluable. His drive and energy led him to form NA Software and he left the NAG committees to concentrate his energies into making this a success.

Mike was a very talented mathematician and had an enthusiasm for the new computer languages and architectures. I recall that he worked with NAG to build an Algol 68 library. When Ada came along he was equally energetic to embrace the new language. He was a keen advocate and was actively engaged with the Ada Numerics working party and contributed to the book Scientific Ada (Ford et al.) published by OUP. He helped NAG build its Ada library, parts of which are still used in the software for the Eurofighter.

New architectures too interested Mike and he worked with NAG on an ESPRIT Supernode project. This ran from 1985 to 1989, and aimed to create a low-cost, high-performance computer system based on the transputer manufactured by INMOS. The project looked at the design of software for such multiple instruction, multiple data architectures.

At a personal level I remember Mike as a very gifted and enthusiastic person, with a quick wit which he could use to devastating effect. The world will be the poorer at his passing.

Dr David Sayer

Webpage maintained by Charles Goldie for the Suss-Ex Club, the association for ex-staff of the University of Sussex.