John McWhirter (mathematician)
Encyclopedia
John G. McWhirter FRS
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

 FREng
Royal Academy of Engineering
-Overview: is the UK’s national academy of engineering. The Academy brings together the most successful and talented engineers from across the engineering sectors for a shared purpose: to advance and promote excellence in engineering....

 FIMA FInstP FIEE FLSW is a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 mathematician and engineer in the field of signal processing
Signal processing
Signal processing is an area of systems engineering, electrical engineering and applied mathematics that deals with operations on or analysis of signals, in either discrete or continuous time...

.

John McWhirter graduated in mathematics from Queen's University Belfast in 1970, gaining a PhD there in 1973. He started working in the Signal Processing Group at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment
Royal Signals and Radar Establishment
The Royal Signals and Radar Establishment was a scientific research establishment within the Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom, located primarily at Malvern in Worcestershire. It was formed in 1976 in an amalgamation of earlier research establishments including the Royal Radar Establishment...

, Great Malvern
Great Malvern
Great Malvern is an area of Malvern, Worcestershire, England. It is the historical centre of the town, and the location of the headquarters buildings of the of Malvern Town Council, the governing body of the Malvern civil parish, and Malvern Hills District council of the county of...

, in the late 1970s, and has worked there for RSRE's successor organizations, currently QinetiQ
QinetiQ
Qinetiq is a British global defence technology company, formed from the greater part of the former UK government agency, Defence Evaluation and Research Agency , when it was split up in June 2001...

. Prof. McWhirter left QinetiQ on 31 August 2007 to take up his current post as Distinguished Research Professor in Engineering at Cardiff University
Cardiff University
Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...

.

His work has mainly been in military areas including radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...

, sonar
Sonar
Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels...

 and communications, recently branching into civil applications. A particular interest is "blind" signal detection in which one does not know whether a signal is present, or its nature.

Awards

  • 1986 honorary visiting professor at Queen's University Belfast
  • 1988 visiting professor at Cardiff University
    Cardiff University
    Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...

  • 1996 Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
    Royal Academy of Engineering
    -Overview: is the UK’s national academy of engineering. The Academy brings together the most successful and talented engineers from across the engineering sectors for a shared purpose: to advance and promote excellence in engineering....

  • 1999 Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society
    Royal Society
    The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

    .
  • 2000 Honorary Doctorate from the Queen's University Belfast
  • 2002 Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh
    University of Edinburgh
    The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...



He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Physics
Institute of Physics
The Institute of Physics is a scientific charity devoted to increasing the practice, understanding and application of physics. It has a worldwide membership of around 40,000....

. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications
Institute of Mathematics and its Applications
The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications is the UK's chartered professional body for mathematicians and one of the UK's learned societies for mathematics ....

 (IMA) and in 2002/3 its president. He is also a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales
Learned Society of Wales
The Learned Society of Wales is a society that exists to “celebrate, recognise, preserve, protect and encourage excellence in all of the scholarly disciplines”.The society was launched on 25 May 2010 at the National Museum of Wales...

.

Selected papers

  • On the numerical inversion of the Laplace transform and similar Fredholm integral equations of the first kind, J G McWhirter and E R Pike, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 11 1729–1745 (1978)
  • Some systolic array developments in the United Kingdom, John V. McCanny and John G. McWhirter, Computer Volume 20, Issue 7 p. 51 (1987)

External links

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