Sydney  -  Electronic music pioneer Tristram Cary, the technical whiz behind the Dr Who theme tune, has died in Adelaide at the age of 82, his family announced Monday.

English-born and Oxford-educated, Cary emigrated to Australia in 1974 to set up an electronic music studio along the lines of the one he established at London's Royal College of Music in 1967.

University of Adelaide music head Stephen Wittington said Cary's contribution to music was "impossible to quantify" and had inspired 1960s rock groups Pink Floyd, The Who and Roxy Music.

He helped design the VCS3 portable synthesizer that Pink Floyd used on their 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon.

"He laid the foundations," Whittington said. "Without him, we wouldn't have techno, hip-hop or any kind of music which is sustained by technology."

Cary, who died on Thursday, was a naval radar officer during World War II and was quick to grasp the possibilities of German technology that allowed sound to be recorded on magnetic tape.

He worked on the film scores of 1955's The Ladykillers and Hammer's 1967's Quatermass and the Pit. In the 1960s he produced music for the television series Dr Who.

Cary's father was prominent Irish-born novelist Joyce Cary. "He had a really unusual childhood, his father was an author and TS Eliot and James Joyce were always coming around for tea," Whittington told the Adelaide Advertiser.

"After the war, the Americans, British and Germans had a huge amount of electronic gear which came onto the market and was incredibly cheap," Whittington said. "That's when he began fiddling with things." (dpa)