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Denyer,  Peter Brian  (1953-2010), electronic engineer and entrepreneur, was born on 27 April 1953 at the Zachary Merton maternity home, Rustington, Sussex, the eldest of three sons of Robert Ralph Denyer and his wife, Eveline May, nee Swinbank. His father was a wood-working machinist and his mother a clerk for a timber company. At the time of his birth they lived in Wick, Sussex. From an early age he enjoyed puzzles, and learned practical skills of fixing and repairing things from his father. He attended Worthing Technical High School and Loughborough University. He graduated with a first-class degree in electronics, and his tutors reported on him as one of the best students they had ever had. The 'sandwich' structure of the course involved a one-year industrial placement. For Denyer this was held jointly at Warren Spring Laboratory, Stevenage, and the Government Communications Headquarters, Cheltenham. At the latter he met and fell in love with Fiona Margaret Lindsay Reoch (b. 1951), a languages expert and later schoolteacher from Edinburgh, also on placement there. She was the daughter of Ernest William Reoch and Phyllis Anderson, nee Smith, both journalists. She and Denyer married in Edinburgh on 20 July 1977 and had two daughters, Kate and Kirsty.

On leaving university Denyer took a job as systems development engineer at Ferranti, but within months he moved to a job at the University of Edinburgh's Wolfson Microelectronics Institute, under the direction of David Milne, designing large-scale integrated circuits. This work was the subject of his first publication in Electronics Letters, followed over the next few years by sixteen further, related, publications. He registered for a PhD on this topic under the supervision of John Mavor, awarded in 1980. During this period he pioneered new circuit techniques in charge-coupled device (CCD) and metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) technologies, producing a series of programmable sonar pulse compression devices that demonstrated world-firsts in integration density for these functions. He also invented a single-transistor MOS multiplier which demonstrated computation rates of up to 500 million arithmetic operations per second on a single chip, a world-leading performance.

At this time silicon chip technology was just starting to become widely accessible. In Scotland investment was under way to create 'Silicon Glen', as an echo of California's Silicon Valley. University electronics and computing departments were starting to create new courses in chip design. Seeing the emerging opportunities and demand for skilled integrated circuit designers, Denyer co-founded Denyer-Walmsley (Microelectronics) Ltd, a company specializing in signal processing and imaging, and worked there as director and engineer for one year (1979-80). This was his first experience of life as an entrepreneur. The company continued successfully after Denyer resumed his academic career.

In 1980 Denyer was appointed a lecturer in the department of electrical engineering at the University of Edinburgh. He retained and then systematically built up advisory and consultancy links with a variety of high-tech UK companies. Links to 'real world' applications and products were very important to him, and he often gave his best research ideas to his undergraduate and postgraduate students and worked energetically and closely with them to turn each into something useful. This meant that there was a great sense of adventure and excitement working with him. His first funded research role (1981-6) was as principal investigator of a major interdisciplinary research programme in very-large-scale integration (VLSI) architectures for signal processing. From this work came numerous academic papers and two books. Denyer attempted to commercialize the results of this research but this attempt ended in frustration. However, he was undaunted, learning from the experience and preparing for his next opportunity.

In 1986 Denyer received a routine promotion to reader but one day later was appointed to the newly created Advent chair of integrated electronics, which he had been instrumental in bringing to Edinburgh. He was at that time the youngest professor at the university. The years 1986-9 saw the university's Integrated Systems Group undergo a rapid expansion under his direction. By 1989 there were eight separate research activities of varying size. Three deserve mention. The first was the Silicon Architectures Research Initiative, a large, joint university-industry research programme with thirty researchers, and valued at £2 million. Through this Denyer acquired the skills of running a large-scale research activity, and of dealing with its many and varied demands-technical, personnel, managerial, and financial. The second was a fingerprint verification research project funded by the Quantum Fund and De La Rue. This was significant in the long term for Denyer, in that it defined the need for a low-cost image sensor. The third was designing prototype complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors. This work had initially been started by Denyer in 1984. In 1987 he applied to University Venture Capital Fund holders for a small sum to patent, develop, and fabricate the design. When testing revealed better than hoped for performance, funding was sought from the Science and Engineering Research Council to develop the technology, and a single-chip CMOS video camera was designed and fabricated in 1988/9.

In 1990 Denyer founded VLSI Vision Ltd (VVL) with David Renshaw, support from the University of Edinburgh, and Roy Warrender, who was recruited as sales and marketing manager and the company's first employee. Its first task was to engineer the prototype single chip CMOS camera into a miniaturized, marketable consumer product. In parallel, contracts were negotiated with interested companies to undertake product development. Within two years the company grew from one to about forty employees. Denyer was increasingly drawn into business planning and the problem of raising the financial investment needed. By the end of 1992 VVL had outgrown its university accommodation and needed a significant injection of new cash to continue. This was accomplished by renegotiating and widening share ownership. VVL cut its direct links to the university and moved off-campus to become an independent company. The period 1992 to 1995 was marked by continued growth to about eighty employees. Apart from a line of camera products of its own and for client companies VVL developed camera chips for the toy market.

By 1995 further funding was needed. This time the chosen option was to raise money from the sale of shares in a new, publicly owned holding company, the Vision Group plc. This was the first Scottish university spin-out company to be placed on the London Stock Exchange. Competition from other companies now starting to design and market CMOS camera chips forced VVL to enter a period of focusing on the development of its core technology. The next three years marked a period of rapid development, allowing image resolution to increase from 320240 to 640480. The other significant step was from monochrome to colour, which as well as a CMOS image sensor required VVL to develop a colour filter process and a colour co-processor. In 1998-9, to remain competitive and continue trading, VVL had to raise another round of funding, which this time was only possible through an agreed company buy-out. In 1999 STMicroelectronics took over VVL to create its imaging division, in Edinburgh. Using developments of VVL's colour cameras, STMicroelectronics supplied hundreds of millions of camera chips to the first few generations of mobile phones.

Edinburgh University had, in 1990, appointed Denyer to a personal chair, in recognition of his achievements, and he held this post throughout his period at VVL. After the buy-out of VVL, however, he decided he wanted to pass on his experience to other young entrepreneurs and so decided to resign his chair and re-invent himself as a serial entrepreneur. The university appointed him a visiting professor and persuaded him to become a member of the company formation panel of Edinburgh Research and Innovation Ltd. However, Denyer's main activities after 1999 were as a freelance adviser, consultant, and 'angel' investor. In the period 2000-08 he co-founded and was chairman of two further companies (Rhetorical Systems and Ateeda), and was chairman of a further four companies. He also held non-executive directorships on seven other start-up companies and was an adviser to three others.

Denyer was outstanding in that he excelled as a design engineer, an academic, an entrepreneur, and a leader. He was an inspiration to a generation of students and both directly and indirectly inspired some of the ablest and most adventurous to set up high-tech spin-out companies. He had a generous policy, on the more than one hundred publications to his name, of including all who had worked on the research, and he often put a student forward as the principal author. With his students he had some half-dozen 'best paper' awards. He gained the queen's award for technology (1997) for VLSI Vision, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1998), and was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering silver medal (1998) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' millennium medal (2000). In 2008 he and the other designers of the first CMOS single chip camera were awarded the Rank Optoelectronics prize.

Apart from family holidays Denyer did not spend time on leisure pursuits for most of his working life. In the last few years, however, he took up and became passionate about off-shore sailing. Having for most of his life experienced good health, in August 2009, after a long meeting in London, he suddenly collapsed. Initial scans proved negative but by mid-January 2010 he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and on 22 April 2010 he died in the Fairmile Marie Curie Centre, Edinburgh. His funeral was on 29 April at Mortonhall crematorium. He was survived by his wife and their two daughters.

David Renshaw 

Sources  The Herald [Glasgow] (29 April 2010); (15 Jan 2011) + The Scotsman (30 April 2010) + The Times (11 May 2010) + Daily Express (15 May 2010) + Times Higher Education Supplement (27 May 2010) + www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/obits_alpha/Denyer_P.pdf,  accessed on 15 Aug 2013 + personal knowledge (2014) + private information (2014) [Eveline Denyer, mother; Fiona Denyer, widow; C. Saunders] + b. cert. + m. cert. + d. cert.
Archives National Museum of Scotland, VVL products and press cuttings
Likenesses  photographs, 1995, Photoshot, London · P. Tuffy, photograph, University of Edinburgh [see illus.] · obituary photographs
Wealth at death  £1,707,708: probate, 14 Jan 2011, CCI



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