Margaret Marrs

Margaret Marrs (née Lewin; born 1929) is an English computer programmer who was the Senior Operator of the original Electronic delay storage automatic computer (EDSAC). EDSAC was an early British computer constructed at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England, and the second electronic digital stored-program computer to go into regular service.

Born in Lancashire, Marrs grew up in a village called Simonstone. She attended the Clitheroe Grammar school where she completed maths, Latin, and French as her Higher School Certificate subjects. She studied maths at the Girton College, Cambridge, graduating in 1948.

In 1951 Marrs worked as a computer programmer for Ferranti, a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm based in Manchester. Her work for the firm was on adapting 39 differential equations for automatic computers. This was done by working from a paper published in the late 1940s by Stanley Gill, adapting the Runge–Kutta method of solving differential equations for automatic computers.

In 1952 Marrs returned to Cambridge where she was employed by University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory as the Senior Operator for EDSAC.