Tribute to Graham Nudd, 1940 - 2025

I first met Professor Nudd at my 1984 Appointment Board at the University of Warwick - I was appointed as an academic in the Computer Science Department. However, I was astonished to meet him in person because his name, and a chip he had designed whilst at Hughes Research Labs, appeared in the 1982 book “Vision” by David Marr.

Very soon after my appointment Professor Nudd became Chairman of the Computer Science Department. The Department he took over was a centre of excellence for theoretical computer science. But, Computer Science in the 1980’s was becoming much more than a theoretical subject. His impact was immediate and transformational. Within a very few years the Department became one of the best Computer Science Departments in the UK. When we were eventually rated as the top Computer Science Department in the UK, Graham and I trotted off to lunch. Seated next to me he said, “If we are the best, what are the rest of them like?”. He had a wickedly dry sense of humour.  Graham asked me to join his Research Team shortly after my being appointed. He provided the direction, I, and several others, ran around trying to make it happen and trying to keep up with him. His strategic thinking and planning was the driving force.

We had a lot of fun doing research projects. The first was a contract from the US Navy. It became obvious that Graham had done a great deal of work previously for the Navy whilst at Hughes in Malibu. We joked Graham was the only person, ever, to emigrate from Malibu to Coventry (although Broadway is hardly Coventry).

We built weird and wonderful machines and developed techniques that are still relevant to this day. They serve me well. 

Graham would talk to me about his work on RADAR (Stretch but NEVER Squeeze!). He talked about his work on SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave) devices that he invented for RADAR signal processing (possibly for the USAF F-16 fighter). I had met SAW devices years before as a summer intern at MOD RSRE in Malvern - there was a group there known as the SAW Group. I never dreamt I would meet the inventor of SAW devices. Every analog colour television on the planet had a SAW chip inside and Graham held the original patent. He held original patents on optical computing and original patents on 3D chip stacks (now incredibly important for high-end computers, especially in my world of AI). He probably showed me some things he should not have. His depth and breadth was astonishing. His technical creativity and innovation has changed the world - his contribution was huge and significant and only matched by his humility.

We worked together on an anti-tank missile for UK MOD, the final stage just before it hits the target. Much of that work was done at WSTL, his company on the Warwick Science Park. You will have seen the resulting system (NLAW) in extensive use in the first few days of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. We would visit MOD RARDE every few months, or so, and give our presentations on the progress of the work. Usually we would have lunch between sessions. On one occasion Graham leaned over and asked me “What’s this?”. In his stew, the canteen dated to WWII, as did the stew. In his stew, what he was rolling around with his fork in the gravy was an eyeball. I remember him fighting back the giggles. He failed, we all failed!

We had a European Commission Research Contract. It was at one of the meetings in Paris that I saw a side of Graham that was normally hidden (he modelled himself on the fictional detective Columbo). After listening quietly to one of the other contributors wax lyrical for an hour on the subject of “corner-turning algorithms and the Fourier transform”, and having no satisfactory answer to the simple question “Why are you doing that?”, he stood up, covered a blackboard in maths, underlined the final line and repeated the question. They did not know what had hit them. The final project dinner in Pisa was fun. The French group suggested we meet them at a particular restaurant for a final project dinner, Graham, Darren and I turned up, but the French had gone to a different restaurant.

Graham and Laura would, every year or so, take the research team out for dinner, that’s where I first met Alison. On those occasions Laura would tell me funny stories about Graham. One I recall vividly. Graham would buy and sell gold. High frequency trading of quite large amounts. Buying low and selling high, essentially playing the noise in the gold price. (His PhD was on Noise). On one occasion he forgot to issue the sell order. As Laura told it, a truck turned up with a forklift that unloaded a pallet of gold bars and carried them to the front door. “Where would you like these Mrs?”. Laura never told how this was resolved.

Graham taught me by example, by osmosis, by correcting my silly ideas. When I had learnt all I could from Graham he set me loose on research contracts of my own. He still watched over me, but he had grown me as a researcher, something that I now do for the brilliant research team that report to me. He had taught me many of his “tricks”, such as; always hire researchers brighter than you are; only hire lucky people; always keep the customer in the loop. He pointed out that the harder people work in research the luckier they seem to get.

Apart from research Graham was a good teacher of undergraduates. He genuinely cared about them. Of the many stories I could tell you this one sticks out. Every year the new intake of students would gather in the Physics Lecture Theatre, PLT, and await the Chairman and lecturers. Every year. Year after year. Then one year, just before Graham entered the doorway into the PLT I whispered in his ear “Groundhog year”. The look I got seemed to be anger - it wasn’t anger, it was Graham desperately trying not to laugh as he presented himself to the new undergraduates.

Staff meetings were always fun. Graham would allow his fellow academics to argue until they ran out of energy. Hold a vote, ignore it, and do what he wanted to do all along. Benevolent dictatorship. He once told me that out of 22 academics, 21 would hold one view and one would hold a different view. That one was me. He valued and encouraged the smart ass contrary thinker.

Graham would enter my office at the end of the day, sit down and off-load his grumbles. My reward for listening and keeping them to myself was a lift home, he would stuff my bicycle into his Volvo estate and often carry on off-loading.

I liked the man. He taught me how to learn how to manage people, how to manage research, how to motivate a research team and how to be ruthless, yet caring, to get results. I was lucky to meet him and to work with him.

He was my boss, my colleague and my mentor.

Graham Nudd became the Chair of Computer Science at Warwick in 1984 at a highly significant point in the department's history. Though the department had - and to this day enjoys - an international reputation for its research in theoretical computer science, there was at that time a danger of Computer Science becoming marginalised as larger influential departments such as Engineering and Business Studies were impatient to develop their own courses and resources based on a pragmatic approach to computing education tailored to their needs. 

Though Graham was originally recruited as a professor in Engineering, he had a specialist interest in architectures for high-performance computing and appreciated the importance of taking the science of computing and its implications for computing education seriously; he found Computer Science to be a more congenial environment in that respect. Throughout his tenure as Chair, which spanned two decades, he not only encouraged all academics to develop and champion computing as a broad independent discipline but also helped to establish the appropriate culture and infrastructure needed to address this objective. His vision embraced both the creation of a new purpose-built building with enhanced facilities for research and innovations in practices for teaching and administration (including joint undergraduate degrees with Engineering and with Business Studies) that enabled the department to act with a greater degree of autonomy and influence than a relatively small department might typically command. 

In his chairing role, he inevitably had to contend with internal controversy over policy and at the same time defend the department from sometimes unwelcome intervention by external agencies in the university. His long period of office is itself a testimony to his personal qualities and skills in leadership, management and diplomacy. The fact that he had come from a major US company at the forefront of technology gave him a holistic view of computing as a complex practice and discipline with both theoretical and empirical roots. This made him naturally wary of aspirations to make 'world-class' contributions to computing whilst working in isolation within academia - a pretension that, when appropriate, he would memorably parody with his mischievous sense of humour. He encouraged academics to build teams and to cooperate with industrial partners, setting an example in this respect that had an important positive impact on the research culture in the department; this not only benefited staff in their career development but also led to much richer engagement with the many exceptionally gifted computer science undergraduates, attracted during his period of leadership, who could contribute to research through projects that often drew them into postgraduate studies.

From my personal perspective - looking back - I recognise the day when Graham first came over to discuss the possibility of joining our department as one of the most significant moments in my 50 year association with Computer Science at Warwick. Though I never worked in Graham's group, and he and I came to the discipline from quite different directions respectively informed by engineering and mathematics, we shared a perception that the foundations of computer science have to be broader than the classical theoretical mathematical-logical framework alone affords - we bonded as kindred spirits through this conviction. The encouragement Graham gave me to follow my own research interests throughout his Chairmanship had a major impact on my subsequent career, as did his initiative in recruiting Steve Russ as a sympathetic colleague with a deep understanding of foundational issues in mathematics. It was fortunate for me that the programme of research into 'Empirical Modelling (EM)' as a plausible broader framework for computing that I had initiated with Graham's support in the 1980s was acknowledged by the eminent theoretical computer scientist Robin Milner to be well-aligned with his injunction that 'we must make an organised attempt to unite the development of theory with its experimental application'. In retrospect, the development of an introductory module on EM for the first departmental MSc programme on 'Parallel Computers and Computation' was an important turning point in my career. At the time, we were scarcely prepared for such a bold innovation in teaching - the topic itself was far too immature to have been approved as a conventional undergraduate module, we had only the most basic home-grown prototype environment to sustain practical work and had exceedingly limited teaching and technical support. In undertaking this improbable venture, we were indebted to Graham in two aspects: firstly, he had conceived the unconventional format for the MSc modules (taught over a period of five days with one week of practical work to follow - in our case typically during the Christmas vacation) in such a way as to foster experiment and expose - and invite - genuine research contributions; secondly, but for the enthusiasm with which he cajoled us into developing a module and lent his support and authority to its incorporation into the MSc programme, a successful outcome would have been inconceivable. As it was, our MSc module proved to be an invaluable vehicle through which we could consolidate on EM research that was very well-received and supported by many students: a large proportion typically opted to devote their dissertations to EM themes each year, and of these several proceeded to doctoral studies. Our MSc experience established the pattern for rich subsequent collaborations with research and project students that identified EM with a practice of sense-making ('making digital construals') that is complementary to 'computational thinking' and became the basis for a fourth year undergraduate module that was taught from 2004 to 2014. 

The importance of Graham's endorsement only became fully apparent when EM ceased to be recognised as an official Computer Science research and teaching programme a few years after his retirement; the rich set of tools, associated teaching resources and interested former and present researchers that it has left behind are a part of his legacy. As for Graham's concern to bring coherence to the theoretical and practical elements of computer science, this could hardly be more topical in a world where contemporary advances in AI highlight the potential and pitfalls of empirical techniques that more closely integrate engineering practices with abstract formal approaches. Above all, it is credit to Graham's vision that the current Computer Science department, with the blend of leading research and inspirational teaching that he helped to forge, is still well-suited to grappling with Milner’s challenge of 'uniting the development of theory with its experimental application'. In that respect, we are all - and myself especially - in his debt.

It was the Autumn of 1992 when I first arrived in England, coming from Greece with a small academic background and big aspirations. Graham Nudd accepted me into his Parallel Systems research group, despite the fact that my funds would only cover one year of study—something that would make completing a typical 3-to-5-year PhD seem impossible. Within a few months, Graham had secured a major European Union grant and offered me a research assistant job, lifting the weight of my financial anxiety. He had this incredible ability to sense what his team needed—whether it was academic guidance or personal support—and he always knew how to step in at the right moment.

Graham wasn’t just a brilliant academic leader; he created an environment where everyone felt valued. He struck the perfect balance between offering guidance and giving us the freedom to explore and innovate. But beyond the work, it was the sense of community he fostered that made all the difference.

One of my fondest memories was when Graham, along with his wife and daughter, came to the University to pick me up for Sunday lunch. It was a spontaneous and thoughtful gesture that I’ll never forget. It wasn’t just a lunch—it was a moment of warmth and kindness, something that made me feel part of his family, not just a student in his group.

At the end of every major event, whether it was a conference or a project review, Graham would always take the whole team out for a fancy meal. It was a celebration of our hard work, complete with drinks and cigars. For me, a kid from Greece who had taken his first flight to get to England, these dinners felt like a glimpse of the world beyond what I knew.

Graham’s influence in my life goes beyond just academic achievements. Alongside my father, he is one of the most influential people I’ve ever had the privilege to know. The five years I spent with him were formative, and they shaped not just my career but the person I am today. I’ll always be grateful for his mentorship, his kindness, and the lasting impact he had on my life.