Sherlock Holmes is a government official. Mycroft has a unique civil service position as a kind of human database for all aspects of government policy. He lacks Sherlock's interest in physical investigation, however, preferring to spend his time at the Diogenes Club. Holmes says that he first developed his methods of deduction as an undergraduate; his earliest cases, which he pursued as an amateur, came from fellow university students. A meeting with a classmate's father led him to adopt detection as a profession, and he spent several years after university as a consultant before financial difficulties led him to accept John H.
Alan Mycroft charitable organisation whose single-board computer is intended to stimulate the teaching of basic computer science in schools. Mycroft has four children. Alan Mycroft Alan Mycroft is a professor at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, where he is also director of studies for computer science. Mycroft read Mathematics at Cambridge then moved to Edinburgh where he completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree with a thesis on the Abstract interpretation and optimising transformations for applicative programs supervised by Rod Burstall and Robin Milner. Mycroft's research interests are in Programming Languages, Software Engineering and Algorithms.