Brian Oakley

Brian Wynne Oakley, CBE (10 October 1927 – 17 August 2012) was a British civil servant and industrialist who took a leading role in the area of information technology, especially the 1980s Alvey Programme.

Brian Oakley studied science at Exeter College, Oxford. Later he became a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the British Computer Society. He undertook research in telecommunications and civilian applications of military research. He then worked in Whitehall as a civil servant. Subsequently, he became the chief official of the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC).

Oakley was director of the United Kingdom Alvey Programme (1983–87), a British government-sponsored research programme for projects in the area of information technology, initiated as a reaction to the Japanese Fifth generation computer project. He went on to be Chair of Logica (Cambridge) Ltd. He also chaired the managing board of the Computer Centre of the University of London, an important UK supercomputing centre.

Oakley was president of the British Computer Society (1988–89). He was a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He also held honorary doctorates at Sheffield Hallam University (1994) and the University of Essex (1998).