Remembering Emeritus Professor Chris Wallace

Emeritus Professor Chris Wallace was the Foundation Professor and Chair of Information Science at Monash at the age of 34, and Chair of the Monash Department of Computer Science until 1987, lecturing until 1995. He built computer hardware, wrote computer operating systems and other software, his 1964 fast multiplier has pervaded all computing, and his 1996 fast random number generators are even now in computer games. His diverse works also include designing cooling and refrigeration systems, four papers in the prestigious science journal Nature and a compelling argument that - contrary to wide-held beliefs - entropy is not the arrow of time.

His 1968 Minimum Message Length (MML) principle, a universal criterion for fitting models to data, gains continual acceptance worldwide, remaining robust where all other known methods appear to fail.

The Chris Wallace memorial special issue of the Computer Journal (Vol. 51, No. 5 [Sept. 2008]) is currently available. Associate Professor David Dowe from the Clayton School of Information Technology is the guest editor of the issue and author of the Foreword.

Recently, the University recognized Professor Wallace's research contributions by choosing him to be one of 15 Monash academics to receive 50th Anniversary Research Awards. These awards recognize exceptional contributions by scholars to the development of their discipline.

Image: Professor Chris Wallace adjusting his computerised robotic waving-arm device (1977). Image courtesy of Monash University Archives.