Professor Derek S. Henderson and the Fourier transform
Berthold K. P. Horn · Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa · 2010
Derek Henderson played a critical role in the introduction and development of Computer Science at the University of the Witwatersrand — and, by the way, in my career as well. There were no Computer Science courses at Wits when I started my Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering studies in 1961. I did learn though at some point that a “computer ” would soon arrive and be installed in the Electrical Engineering building. I didn't know what that might be, but it sure sounded interesting! To cut a long story short, because of Dr. Henderson's kindness, I was able to learn how to use it, and in 1965, Pieter Kritzinger and I ended up doing our Bachelor's thesis on a comparison of optimal signal filtering methods using analog and digital computers. This was on the Computer Centre's IBM 1620, which, by the way, was a lot less finicky than the analog computer with its numerous failure-prone op-amps that it was competing against. After I graduated in 1965, Dr. Henderson was instrumental in getting me an appointment as junior lecturer and he asked me to teach Numerical Analysis--- which, at that time, was one of the few topics taught in Computer Science (Unfortunately, today, the pendulum has swung the other way, and a student who has taken such a course is rare).