Farewell to Professor Richard Jones

Richard Jones, Head of School of Computing and Professor of Computer Systems retires today after 35 years at the University of Kent. He joined Kent as a member of staff in 1985 after doing a Master’s programme, with a project supervised by Simon Thompson, who also retires today.

Dick has had a distinguished academic career with his research mainly focusing on dynamic memory management and has published the definitive books on garbage collection. His teaching has mainly been around the area of programming languages and systems.

Dick has received external recognition for his work and was made a Distinguished Scientist of the ACM in 2006, and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Glasgow in July 2005. He received IBM Faculty Awards in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and was elected to AITO, Association Internationale pour les Technologies Objets, in 2014.

In 2017 Dick was appointed as Head of the School of Computing and he has led the School through times of great change with purpose and integrity. He said: ‘I had hoped to be retiring under different circumstances, but I’d like to thank you all for the support you have given me.  We are undoubtedly facing difficult times, both as a university and as a country. However, I retire in the knowledge that we have a fantastic School with talented, hard working and convivial colleagues in every role. I wish you all the very best for the future.’

We wish Dick well with his retirement and the extra time he has to spend on his outside interests of cycling, sailing and grandchildren. We hope to give him a better send off when we are allowed to meet in person again.