Brian Oakley

Brian Wynne Oakley, CBE (10 October 1927 – 17 August 2012) was a British civil servant and industrialist who took a leading role in the area of information technology, especially the 1980s Alvey Programme.

In World War II, Brian Oakley served with the Royal Signals as a subaltern. He then studied science at Exeter College, Oxford. Later he became a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the British Computer Society. In 1950 he joined the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) where he undertook research in telecommunications and civilian applications of military research. He then worked in Whitehall as a civil servant, joining the Ministry of Technology under the Harold Wilson government in 1969. Subsequently, he became the chief official of the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC).

Oakley was director of the United Kingdom Alvey Programme (1983–87), a British government-sponsored research programme for projects in the area of information technology, initiated as a reaction to the Japanese Fifth generation computer project. He went on to be Chairman of the software house Logica (Cambridge) Ltd. He also chaired the managing board of the Computer Centre of the University of London, an important UK supercomputing centre, and a director of the European Initiative for Quantum Computing.

From 1988–89, Oakley was President of the British Computer Society. In 1991, on hearing that British Telecom planned to dispose of its site at Bletchley Park for housing, together with Tony Sale, he helped to save the site and establish the Bletchley Park Trust and became a director of the Trust. He was also Chairman of the Computer Conservation Society from 1996 to 2000.

Oakley was a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He also held honorary doctorates at Sheffield Hallam University (1994) and the University of Essex (1998).