20 Facts About Sophie Wilson

1.

Sophie Mary Wilson was born on Roger Wilson; June 1957 and is an English computer scientist, who helped design the BBC Micro and ARM architecture.

2.

Sophie Wilson subsequently joined Acorn Computers and was instrumental in designing the BBC Micro, including the BBC BASIC programming language whose development she led for the next 15 years.

3.

Sophie Wilson first began designing the ARM reduced instruction set computer in 1983, which entered production two years later.

4.

Sophie Wilson is currently a director at the technology conglomerate Broadcom Inc In 2011, she was listed in Maximum PC as number 8 in an article titled "The 15 Most Important Women in Tech History".

5.

Sophie Wilson was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2019.

6.

In July 1981, Sophie Wilson extended the Acorn Atom's BASIC programming language dialect into an improved version for the Acorn Proton, a microcomputer that enabled Acorn to win the contract with the British Broadcasting Corporation for their ambitious computer education project.

7.

Sophie Wilson recalled watching the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on a small portable television while attempting to debug and re-solder the prototype.

8.

In October 1983, Sophie Wilson began designing the instruction set for one of the first reduced instruction set computer processors, the Acorn RISC Machine.

9.

Sophie Wilson designed Acorn Replay, the video architecture for Acorn machines.

10.

Sophie Wilson was a non-executive director of the technology and games company Eidos plc, which bought and created Eidos Interactive, for the years following its flotation in 1990.

11.

Sophie Wilson was a consultant to ARM Ltd when it was split off from Acorn in 1990.

12.

Since the demise of Acorn Computers, Sophie Wilson has made a small number of public appearances to talk about work done there.

13.

Sophie Wilson is the Director of IC Design in Broadcom's Cambridge, UK office.

14.

Sophie Wilson was the Chief Architect of Broadcom's Firepath processor.

15.

Sophie Wilson was listed in 2011 in Maximum PC as number 8 in an article titled "The 15 Most Important Women in Tech History".

16.

Sophie Wilson received the 2014 Lovie Lifetime Achievement Award in acknowledgement for her invention of the ARM processor.

17.

Sophie Wilson was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to computing.

18.

Sophie Wilson underwent gender reassignment surgery and transitioned from male to female in 1994.

19.

Sophie Wilson enjoys photography and is involved in a local theatre group, where she is in charge of costumes and set pieces and has acted in a number of productions.

20.

Sophie Wilson has played a cameo role as a pub landlady in the BBC television drama Micro Men, in which a younger Wilson is played by Stefan Butler.