Richard Zobel obituary

My father, Richard Zobel, who has died aged 81, was a pioneering computer scientist at the University of Manchester, birthplace of Baby", the world's first stored-program computer.

He rode the wave of the information technology revolution, starting in the early 1960s on military flight simulators for the electronics and equipment company Sperry's - the valve analog computers they used ran so hot that he had to work in the cool of the night - and in later years recommending improvements to the distant early warning system (Dews) protecting Indian Ocean coastlines from tsunami, but it was his 40-year academic career that defined his professional life.