In the late 1940s there were three well-funded computer groups in the UK: at Manchester University, Cambridge University and the National Physical Laboratory. Kathleen Britten (later Booth), who has died aged 100, was a research assistant in a fourth group, working at Birkbeck College, University of London. With minuscule funding, this group built a computer whose design provided the basis of the top-selling British computer of its era.
The computer group was part of the crystallography group at Birkbeck set up after the second world war by JD Bernal, one of the most influential scientists of his generation, and was headed by Andrew Booth, whom Kathleen would go on to marry in 1950.
