Antony Lewis


Antony Martin Lewis is a British cosmologist and software developer.
Lewis grew up in South London and East-Berlin. After attending Alleyn's School in Dulwich, London, he completed a PhD in Physics at the University of Cambridge in 2000 and went on to study Astronomy. Lewis has been Professor of Cosmology at the University of Sussex and Greater Brighton and Hove since 2010.
WWW crossword-compiler.com

Software developer

The first MS-DOS crossword puzzle programs were relatively limited. It took a few years before computers had enough memory to make crossword algorithms usable. Antony Lewis developed software for his crossword puzzle program 'Crossword Compiler', and its accompanying dictionary lists.

Crossword Compiler

Lewis combined the development of the necessary software with a deep interest in lexicography and lexical databases. As a developer, he invented the Crossword Compiler software program in 1993, which allows ready-made layouts to be used for crossword puzzles, word searches, cryptic crosswords, sudokus, and other puzzle diagrams. The program has since been used worldwide by professional puzzle creators, teachers, and puzzle enthusiasts.
Since then, users have included major newspapers such as The Times and the British newspapers The Guardian and The Independent. Publishers and language teachers also use the program for teaching materials and competition puzzles. The program is supported in several languages, including Western and Eastern European languages, Cyrillic, and Baltic languages. The Crossword Compiler program has an auto-complete function. As a developer, Lewis regularly consulted puzzlers about desired features and functionality.

WordWeb

Lewis designed 'WordWeb', an electronic dictionary application, for the software. The algorithms used quickly fill puzzles with words from user-defined lists. The word lists were automatically updated by the program and also allow puzzle creators to create a personal word list. Such personal word lists can be customized and arranged as needed. The program searches the relevant word list for letter patterns that might match.
Suppose the creator is presented with a string like ', where ' represents an unfilled blank. Crossword Compiler's built-in word list can then suggest common English words as suitable options, such as, ' and '. Later versions, after adding new entries, could also suggest ', ' and .

Cosmologist

In 1997, Lewis earned a Master of Physics from the University of Cambridge and subsequently a PhD from Cavendish University in geometric algebra and covariant methods in physics and cosmology. In 2002, he moved to Toronto, where he worked, among other places, at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University. In 2005, he returned to the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge and moved to Sussex in 2010, where he worked on various aspects of cosmology, particularly the cosmic microwave background, gravitational lensing, and observational theory. After being part of the core team that analyzed data from the Planck satellite, Lewis now works at the Simons Observatory, which studies cosmic origins.

Publications (selection)

Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parametersPlanck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parametersCMB lensing and primordial squeezed non-Gaussianity The real shape of non-Gaussianities The linear power spectrum of observed source number counts  Likelihood Analysis of CMB Temperature and Polarization Power Spectra Cluster masses from CMB and galaxy weak lensing CMB anisotropies from primordial inhomogeneous magnetic fields Evolution of cosmological dark matter perturbations In Clifford Algebras and their applications in mathematical physics vol. postscript