Conjuring with Computation
Paul Curzon and Peter W McOwan
Professor Peter W McOwan
Peter W McOwan, who died in 2019, was Vice Principal for Public Engagement and Student Enterprise at Queen Mary University of London and a Professor of Computer Science. He gained degrees in mathematical physics, psychology and medical physics, and a PhD in physics. Magic was an interest though out his life and he made it a core part of the Computer Science for Fun (CS4FN) and Teaching London Computing projects he created with Paul Curzon. He was awarded the IET Mountbatten Medal in 2011 for his work promoting IT and electronics. He also promoted maths and science, including working with the UK Space Agency and children’s author Lucy Hawking on school resources to support Tim Peake’s trip to the International Space Agency and the ExoMars rover mission. His research covered vision, cognitive science and biologically inspired computing which he presented at the prestigious Royal Society summer exhibition four times. His robots appeared in TV documentaries, including the Royal Institution Christmas lectures. He gave evidence on the public perception of AI to the UK House of Lords select committee on artificial intelligence. He was a National Teaching Fellow by the Higher Education Academy and was a founding member of the Computing at Schools group.
Professor Paul Curzon
Paul Curzon is a Professor of Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London, teaching programming and interaction design. He was awarded the 2020 IEEE Taylor L Booth Education Award “for outstanding contributions to the rebirth of Computer Science as a school subject.” as a result of his Computer Science for Fun and Teaching London Computing projects that promote the fun side of computer science and support teachers. Both have a global following. He was introduced to magic by McOwan during the CS4FN project. He is a National Teaching Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He also won the EPSRC’s “New Computer Science Writer of the Year” Award and has won multiple awards for excellence in teaching and learning, including student nominated ones. His research interests include computer science education, interaction design and healthcare. He gained a first class honours degree and PhD in Computer Science from Christ’s College, Cambridge University. His research on human error was presented at the prestigious Royal Society summer exhibition. He was a founding member of the UK Computing at Schools group and is on the academic board of the National Centre for Computing Education.
Peter and Paul did the first version of their “The Magic of Computer Science” workshops in 2005 as a Saturday morning activity for school students. They went on to do a variety of versions, sometimes together, sometimes separately at both primary and secondary schools, universities and science festivals across the UK, teaching the magic along with Computer Science, Maths, Science and Engineering.
Peter and and Paul planned and wrote much of the book together with Peter supplying virtually all of the magic. After Peter’s untimely death, Paul completed it over the next few years with the kind support of Peter’s family. Having loved magic all his life it was something Peter really wanted us to do so it seemed right to carry on.
Curzon and McOwan cowrote the World Scientific book, The Power of Computational Thinking: Games, Magic and Puzzles to Help You Become a Computational Thinker.
Download past issues of the CS4FN magazine. The magazine was created, written and jointly edited by Paul and Peter until Peter’s death.
Conjuring with Computation 