Ken Thompson

Co-creator of the UNIX operating system, Thompson is an American pioneer of computer science notable for his work with the B programming language and his shepherding of the Unix and Plan 9...

Fernando (Corby) J. Corbato

Pioneer in the development of general-purpose, large-scale, time-sharing and resource-sharing computer systems, Corbató received the ACM Turing Award in 1990 for these foundational contributions. Fernando (Corby) J. Corbató was born on July 1,...

Ben Shneiderman

Known for experimentation on the use of flowcharts and information visualization in programming, Shneiderman conducted experiments in his earlier work on studying programmers which suggested that flowcharts were not helpful for writing,...

Miguel de Icaza

Starter of the GNOME project with Federico Mena in August 1997, de Icaza aimed to create a completely free desktop environment and component model for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. Earlier,...

Chien-Shiung Wu

Renowned for conducting the Wu experiment, which proved that parity is not conserved, Wu was a Chinese-American particle and experimental physicist whose work reshaped nuclear and particle physics. Her discovery led directly...

Harold Locke Hazen

Pioneer in the development of differential analyzers, Hazen collaborated with Vannevar Bush at MIT to construct the first widely practical such machine, built 1928–1931 and comprising six mechanical integrators. In the same year,...

Trevor Pearcey

Creator of CSIRAC, one of the first stored program electronic computers in the world, Pearcey was an outstanding Australian ICT Pioneer. Most notably, he led the project team that built one of the...

Ramakrishnan Srikant

Key architect for IBM Intelligent Miner, Srikant contributed the association rules and sequential patterns modules to the product. Dr. Srikant has served as a Principal Research Scientist at Google. He previously managed the...

Lois Haibt

The only female member of the ten-person team that invented FORTRAN, Haibt is an American computer scientist perhaps most famous for her role in creating the first successful high-level programming language. She...

Patricia S. Cowings

The first American woman to be trained as a scientist astronaut by NASA, Cowings was an aerospace psychophysiologist whose work focused on the physiology of astronauts in outer space. She served as...

Lee E. McMahon

Contributor to early versions of the Unix operating system, including the sed stream editor, McMahon worked for Bell Labs from 1963 until 1989. McMahon was a computer scientist who graduated from St. Louis...

Robert Marco Tomasulo

Inventor of the Tomasulo algorithm, a computer architecture hardware algorithm for dynamic scheduling of instructions that allows out-of-order execution, Tomasulo was the recipient of the 1997 Eckert–Mauchly Award, "for the ingenious Tomasulo...

Vilhelm Friman Koren Bjerknes

His experiments with electric oscillations contributed much to the development of wireless telegraphy. Bjerknes was a Norwegian physicist and meteorologist who did much to found the modern practice of weather forecasting. He...

Francoise Barre-Sinoussi

Winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Barré-Sinoussi shared the award with her former mentor Luc Montagnier for their discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Her fundamental work...

Jean Calvignac

Leader of the team responsible for the architecture of IBM network processors, Calvignac is a 1997 IBM Fellow. Network processors are an integrated circuit which has a feature set specifically targeted at...

Jeff De Luca

Primary architect of Feature Driven Development (FDD), De Luca created this lightweight methodology for developing computer software with reduced management overhead, time and money circa 1999. He is a global information technology...

Alexander Bain

Inventor of the electric clock and pioneer of the telegraph, Bain transformed early communications technology. His first patent was dated January 11, 1841, and was in the names of John Barwise, chronometer...

Ralph J. Slutz

ENIAC physicist and computer pioneer, Slutz made critical contributions to two milestones of human computing history. He passed away on November 16, 2005, at Boulder Community Hospital, Colorado, USA, at age 88. Dr....

John George Kemeny

Co-developer of the BASIC programming language, Kemeny transformed computing by making it accessible to ordinary people. Kemeny entered Princeton University, where he studied mathematics and philosophy, but he took a year off during...

Cesar A. Gonzales

Co-inventor of patented still-frame and motion video compression techniques that IBM contributed to the JPEG and MPEG international standards, Gonzales played a central role in bringing about the worldwide leap into digital...