Roger Sippl

Co-developer of the relational database Informix (INFORMation on unIX) and co-founder of Relational Database Systems (RDS), Sippl earned a B.S. in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. He and...

Leslie John Comrie

Pioneer in mechanical computation and astronomy, Comrie was also the founder of the world's first private company for scientific computing. He was born in Pukekohe (south of Auckland), New Zealand, and attended Auckland...

Thomas J. Misa

Noted IT historian and director of the Charles Babbage Institute (CBI), Misa specializes in the interactions of technology and modern culture. His undergraduate degree was from M.I.T. (1981) and his Ph.D. from...

Terry G. Johnson

Founder of Miniscribe in 1980, an early manufacturer of 5.25-inch and later 3.5-inch drives, Johnson was a pioneer in disk storage products. Born in Ogden, Utah, Johnson graduated from high school in 1953....

Andrew James Viterbi

Inventor of the Viterbi algorithm, used for decoding convolutionally encoded data and still widely used in cellular phones for error correcting codes, as well as for speech recognition, DNA analysis, and many...

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...

Maja Mataric

A founding pioneer of the field of socially assistive robotics, Matarić held the Chan Soon-Shiong Endowed Chair and served as Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, with...

LaRoy Tymes

Co-designer and developer of "Supervisor" for Tymnet, Tymshare's proprietary network, Tymes grew up in Wyoming, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan, but didn't complete his education there. Instead, he got a...

Andrew F. Kay

Inventor of the digital voltmeter, Kay created an instrument used for measuring electrical potential difference between two points in an electric circuit. He was President and CEO of Kaypro Computers, a personal...

Muffy Calder

Chief Scientific Advisor to the Scottish Government from 2012 to 2015, Calder was a Canadian-born British computer scientist and Professor of Formal Methods at the University of Glasgow. She also served as...

Jef Raskin

Human-computer interface expert best known for starting the Macintosh project for Apple, Raskin first met Apple Computer's Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak following the debut of their Apple II personal computer at...

Frank Gerald Soltis

Chief Scientist for IBM's System i computers, Soltis is recognized as a pioneer of technology-independent machine interfaces (TIMI) and describes himself as the grandfather of the AS/400. His pioneering architecture of TIMI...

Robert L. Patrick

Designer of the first operating system — a non-stop multi-user batch processing operating system for the IBM 704 — Patrick entered the computer field in 1955. While at Convair, in Ft. Worth,...

Frederic Alois Friedel

Co-founder of the chess database company ChessBase, Friedel is a German graduate linguist, science, chess, and computer chess journalist. He co-founded ChessBase in 1986 with game database developer Matthias Wöllenweber. He studied...

Grace M. Hopper

Developer of COBOL and pioneering computer scientist, Hopper was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and she developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. She...

Eva Tardos

Recipient of the Fulkerson Prize (1988), the Dantzig Prize (2006), and the IEEE John von Neumann Medal (2019), Tardos is known as a Hungarian mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of...

Frederick M. Hoar

A Silicon Valley public relations and marketing executive legend, Hoar died January 2 after a three-year bout with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He was 77. Hoar was one of Silicon Valley's most visible public...

Lawrence Moser Breed

Creator of the first computer animation language and system, Breed built it as an undergraduate at Stanford University in 1961 and used it at Stanford football half-times to coordinate images produced by...

Cheryl L. Shavers

Appointed Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology in the Clinton Administration, Shavers served in that role from 1999 to 2001, representing one of the most senior positions in U.S. technology policy. Her...

Thomas E. Osborne

Developer of the architecture for the HP9100A, an early computer, Osborne joined Hewlett-Packard in 1965 as a consultant with that responsibility. Prior to joining HP, he had designed data processing equipment, then...