Husband and wife Andrew and Kathleen Booth transformed the field of computer science, working at Birkbeck as one of the smallest of the early British computer groups and building some of the first electronic computers, with their pioneering work still evident today.

Their best-known machine, the All-Purpose Electronic Computer, was designed in Birkbeck’s Computer Laboratory between 1947 and 1953. The team also created the ARC (Automatic Relay Computer), the SEC (Simple Electronic Computer), remarkable achievements given the size of the team and the resources it had access to.

Andrew often built the machines and Kathleen programmed them. Kathleen is credited as being one of the first female computer pioneers and built the first assembly language for computer programming; and Andrew’s magnetic storage devices and the multiplication algorithm, pioneered at Birkbeck, form the basis of modern-day computer technology.

Birkbeck’s expertise in computer science traces its roots back to the Computer Laboratory founded by Andrew Booth as a research assistant in J.D. Bernal’s Department of Crystallography.