F. W. Jordan

Frank Wilfred Jordan (6 October 1881 – 12 January 1941) was a British physicist who together with William Henry Eccles invented the flip-flop circuit in 1918.^[1][2] This circuit became the basis for electronic binary data storage in computers.

Frank Wilfred Jordan was born on 6 October 1881 in Canterbury, Kent, England, the son of Edward James Jordan and Eliza Edith King. He married Fanny Bentley Wood, a florist, in Canterbury, when based in Newhaven as a soldier on 7 December 1916. He died on 12 January 1941 in Coltham, Gretton Road, Winchcomb, Gloucestershire, England, aged 59.

Information including date and place of birth, marriage and death are confirmed in Certificates from the General Register Office.^[3][4][5][6] Jordan received his secondary education at the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury, Kent, England.^[7] From 1899 to 1904, he was a student at the Royal College of Science,^[8] from which he graduated with an Associateship in physics and a master of science degree.^[9][10] In 1912 he was a "lecturer in physics", presumably at the Royal College of Science.^[11] In 1918 he was an "electrician" at City and Guilds Technical College.^[12] There is little else known about him.