My 21st Birthday Card

My 21st birthday was on 27th September 1965 and this card was drawn by Kitty Michaelson.

Sidney Michaelson, his wife Kitty, and their four children had moved from London to Edinburgh in 1963 when Sid was appointed (aged 37) first Director of the new Computer Unit at Edinburgh University. Sid had grown up in a Jewish family in the East End of London. Kitty practised and taught fine art.

I met the Michaelsons in 1964 through a class-mate and friend of mine, Helen Smeed, whose father Reuben Smeed was another mathematician and author of the “1964 Smeed Report which recommended introducing congestion pricing on busy roads - recommendations which were not taken up until the London congestion charge was introduced in 2003”.