Christopher Strachey (1916–1975) was one of the founding figures of modern computer science. A brilliant theorist and practical innovator, he played a central role in shaping programming language theory at a time when computing itself was still in its infancy. His 1967 lecture notes helped define the formal study of programming languages, influencing generations of computer scientists and laying groundwork for later advances in language design and semantics. On a different level, he was the first to create electric music, a video game and a generative text program way before ChatGPT.
Strachey was also a pioneer of time-sharing systems, advocating for computers to be used interactively by multiple users rather than in isolated batch processes — a vision that anticipated modern networked computing. In the 1950s, he wrote one of the earliest computer-generated music programs for the Ferranti Mark I and contributed to early artificial intelligence research, demonstrating both technical mastery and creative imagination.
Strachey had no academic qualifications. He never finished his BA but was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bath. He worked alongside Alan Turing at Bletchley Park in WW2. Both gay men worked during a period when homosexuality was criminalised in Britain. If that name seems familiar, it is because he is the nephew of openly homosexual Lytton Strachey, part of the Bloomsbury Group.
