Pat Terry

Pat Terry is a South African computer scientist who earned his PhD in physics from the University of Cambridge and, in 1972, joined the Department of Applied Mathematics at Rhodes University under Professor Rolf Braae, having worked as a student on the university's ICT 1301 computer, one of the first computers installed at a South African university. He became Professor of Computer Science in Rhodes' newly created Department of Computer Science in 1981, twice serving as head of department, and later Assistant Dean, Deputy Dean and finally Dean of the Faculty of Science until 2008, publishing six computer science textbooks and continuing to teach and administer the university timetable until 2020 after his 2010 retirement. He served on the International Organization for Standardization committee that standardized the Modula-2 programming language, and a meeting at one of its workshops with fellow committee member Randy Bush of Portland, Oregon led him, in 1988, to bring FidoNet software back to Rhodes University; he wrote code to intercept, split and compress large messages for transmission over the resulting network, an innovation that spread across FidoNet nodes and helped establish South Africa's first email and networking links to the outside world. He received the Pioneers in Computing Award from the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists in 2010.