Mathematician John Todd, a pioneer in numerical analysis and computing, died Thursday at age 96 at his home in Pasadena, Calif.

Todd, an emeritus professor at the California Instate of Technology, helped shape the foundation for today's computer science field, Caltech said in a news release.

Todd, who was born in Ireland and raised in Belfast, served with the British Admiralty during World War II. He is referred to by some as the "Savior of Oberwolfach" for preventing the destruction of the Mathematical Research Institute at Oberwolfach in Germany.

In an oral history for Caltech, Todd called the incident as "probably the best thing I ever did for mathematics."

In 1947, he and his wife Olga came to the United States to help establish the National Applied Mathematical Laboratories at UCLA, part of the National Bureau of Standards. They later moved to the NBS headquarters in Washington, where they helped launch the field of high-speed computer programming and analysis and also became U.S. citizens.

The couple began teaching at Caltech in 1957.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International