Joseph Marie Jacquard

Inventor of the earliest programmable loom, Jacquard transformed weaving with his automatic patterned-silk loom, though his early inventions operated poorly and were largely unsuccessful. In 1801, Jacquard exhibited his invention at the industrial...

Muhammad ibn Musa al

Presenter of the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations in Arabic, al-Khwārizmī was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer—a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad whose life spanned...

Guglielmo Marconi

Known as the father of long distance radio transmission, Marconi was an Italian inventor celebrated for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. Although he is often accredited as...

Geoffrey William Arnold Dummer

The first person to conceptualize and build a prototype of the integrated circuit, commonly called the microchip, Dummer made this pioneering contribution in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He passed the...

George W. Platzman

One of the founders of modern meteorology, Platzman helped formulate the first weather forecast by computer, carried out in 1950 on the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC). He pioneered the field...

Léon Bollée

Inventor of the first calculating machine, Bollée began work in 1887 on three calculating machines: the Direct Multiplier, the Calculating Board, and the Arithmographe. Bollée's Multiplier was the second successful direct-multiplying calculator...

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz

The first to satisfactorily demonstrate the existence of electromagnetic waves, Hertz clarified and expanded the electromagnetic theory of light that had been put forth by Maxwell. He was born in Hamburg, Germany,...

Harry Wexler

A pioneer in the use of computers for weather prediction and modification, Wexler was an American meteorologist who attended Harvard University, and in 1939 was awarded a Ph.D. in meteorology from the...

Edvard Georg Raphael Scheutz

Co-developer of the Scheutzian calculation engine that produced the first tables calculated and printed by machinery, Scheutz made pioneering contributions to mechanical computation alongside his father, Pehr George Scheutz. He began his...

Carl Hammer

A pioneer in many ways, he was foremost an organizer and a tireless promoter of computing, who gave of his time and talents so that others could learn about this new and...

Gustav Tauschek

Developer of numerous improvements for punched card-based calculating machines, Tauschek was an Austrian pioneer of information technology who worked in this field from 1922 to 1945. During the years 1926–1930 he worked...

Betty Jean Bartik (née Jennings)

One of the original six programmers of the ENIAC computer, Betty Jean Jennings (later known as Jean Bartik) helped lay the groundwork for modern computing during a pioneering era in the field....

George Barnard Grant

One of the few Americans to make a significant contribution to mechanical computation prior to the end of the nineteenth century, Grant improved on the Difference Machine calculator and is recognized as...

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

Fostering the development of alternating current that made possible the expansion of the electric power industry in the United States, Steinmetz was a mathematician and electrical engineer who formulated mathematical theories for...

Galileo Galilei

Called "the Father of Modern Science," Galilei played a major role in the Scientific Revolution, including landmark improvements to the telescope and the invention of an improved military compass. He was born...

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...

Michael Woodger

Co-author of the ALGOL 60 report, a milestone in the history of programming languages, Woodger has been a British computer scientist and Emeritus Professor at the School of Computing Science, Newcastle University,...

Solomon Lefschetz

Developer of the Lefschetz fixed point theorem, now a basic result of topology, Lefschetz did fundamental work on algebraic topology, its applications to algebraic geometry, and the theory of non-linear ordinary differential...

John C. Freeman

Co-developer of numerical models used in making the first successful computer weather forecasts, Freeman is recognized as a pioneer whose work made today's computer models for weather prediction possible. A native Houstonian and...

Anthony E. Siegman

Major contributor in the area of unstable resonators, lasers, and optics, Siegman was an electrical engineer and educator whose work on microwave masers and parametric devices evolved into a distinguished research and...