Unusually, I know the names of all my ancestors along the male line since the 12th century, when a man named Robert de Poher was granted land in Ireland, near Waterford, by Henry II. The de Poher family originated in the Poher region of Brittany, and came to England during the Norman invasion.
Over the centuries, the name de Poher changed to Poer and then to Power, which is now a common name in Ireland, as those who frequent Paddy Power's bookmaking chain can testify.
For some reason the Christian name Pierce (occasionally Piers) was popular in the family. One of my Pierce Power ancestors married Elizabeth Boyle, sister of the Earl of Cork Richard Boyle, whose son Robert discovered that the pressure of a gas is inversely proportional to its volume.
The family's religious affiliation switched from Catholic to Protestant during the Reformation, and I come from a branch dense in clergymen: my grandfather and three uncles were priests.
I was born in Charing Cross Hospital in 1948. My parents, Basil Power and Lorna Edwards, later moved to Crawley in Sussex, where they still live. Basil's brother had previously married Lorna's sister, so as well as two brothers I have four `double-first' cousins (my cousins and I have the same grandparents).
After taking a B.A. in psychology at Sheffield University from 1967-70, I studied for my Ph.D. at the Department of Machine Intelligence, Edinburgh University, from 1970-74, under the supervision of Professor Christopher Longuet-Higgins. From 1975-78 I was a research fellow at the Experimental Psychology Laboratory, Sussex University, where I met my wife, Felicita Dal Martello, who is now a psychology researcher at the University of Padua. Our daughter Katherine, born in 1977, is studying for a PhD in philosophy at Reading University.
From 1978 until 1993 I lived in Padua, Italy, where I worked teaching English at the University, and making expert systems for a Milan-based company called Artificial Intelligence Software. After 15 pleasant years in Italy, where in addition to the Italian language I obtained an education in cooking and football, I returned to Brighton in 1993 to work at the ITRI on Natural Language Generation.
My wife, my daughter, and one of my brothers have home pages.
As a boy I had two main interests, chess and music. Like many children I progressed dutifully through the Associated Board examinations for the piano; chess however was the major obsession. Schoolwork took second place as I became a fairly strong player. Both have remained favourite pastimes, although my level has gradually declined. I play classical music (especially Beethoven, Chopin and Schubert) on a Yamaha digital piano. I belong to the village chess club, which runs a team in the Sussex League.
During my period in Italy, I became interested in the board game Go, which is popular in the Far East, especially in Japan. Go is played on a board of 19 x 19 intersecting lines. At the start of the game, the board is empty; a move is made by placing a stone on an intersection, with the aim of gradually surrounding territory. The strategy of the game is subtle and extraordinarily difficult, so that it allows many gradations of skill; top professional levels can be reached only by someone who has studied with a professional since early childhood.
Recently I have been occupied with futurology, in particular the attempt to anticipate developments during the 21st century. To explore some possibilities, I planned a sequence of three novels covering the period 1995-2100. The first novel,`Mistica', has been written, and can be found on my website on future history. Another recent interest has been the early history of Christianity (see especially the Jesus Puzzle website), which I might manage to work into the second novel in the sequence.