A Suffolk academic has received an honorary award acknowledging his contribution to computing and technology over six decades.

Simon Lavington, Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at the University of Essex, received an Honorary Fellowship of the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park on September 18.

The Honorary Fellowship Programme acknowledges people who have made a significant and lasting contribution to computing and technology.

Professor Lavington, who lives in Ipswich, graduated from The University of Manchester with a degree in Electrical Engineering in 1962 and then obtained a Ph.D specialising in automatic speech recognition using the Atlas computer. He also conducted research into high performance computer design.

Following this he became part of mathematician and computer scientist Tom Kilburn's high-performance unit at the University of Manchester working on the MU5 computer which built on ideas developed during the Atlas project. During the 1960s and 70s the computers built at the university achieved several world firsts.

In 1986 he became Professor of Computer Science at the University of Essex specialising in Systems Architectures. His research at Essex focussed on the hardware and software for parallel information processing. 

One of Professor Lavington's projects at Essex, the Intelligent File Store (IFS), attracted over £1 million in research grants and received a British Computer Society Silver Medal for Technical Achievement.

After the completion of the IFS project in 1996 he worked on parallel techniques for Knowledge Discovery in Databases ('data mining') and interactive video over congested IP networks

After retiring from Essex in 2002 Professor Lavington focused on researching and writing about computer history a hobby he has enjoyed since 1970. His research has particularly focused on early British computers built between 1945 – 1970.

Professor Lavington said he was delighted and honoured to receive the award but also surprised as it came as a complete surprise.

He said: "I'm delighted. I feel honoured in a way. Computer history is not a high-profile thing is it and the books and articles that I've written are a little bit specialised. So, I was surprised."

The National Museum of Computing opened in 2007 at former Second World War codebreaking site on the Bletchley Park estate in Buckinghamshire.

It is based in Block H the site of first purpose build computer centre in the world a site that is regarded as birthplace of modern computing.