David Hilbert

One of the founders of proof theory and mathematical logic, Hilbert's work laid the basis for recursion theory and later theoretical computer science. He was recognized as one of the most influential...

Winifred (Tim) Alice Asprey

Early female computer pioneer who established the first computer science lab at Vassar College, Asprey was one of only around 200 women to earn PhDs in mathematics from American universities during the...

Victor M. Glushkov

Founding father of information technology in the Soviet Union and one of the founders of Cybernetics, Glushkov made significant contributions to the theory of automata. Victor was born in Rostov-on-Don, Russian SFSR, in...

Richard Wesley Hamming

Known for his work on numerical methods, automatic coding systems, and error-detecting and error-correcting codes, Hamming was an American mathematician whose work had many implications for computer science and telecommunications. Hamming's contributions...

Ronald (Ron) Fagin

Pioneer in database theory and finite model theory, Fagin is an American computer scientist and IBM Fellow at the IBM Almaden Research Center, best known for introducing the Fourth Normal Form and...

Charles Sanders Peirce

As early as 1886, Peirce saw that logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits, the same idea that was used decades later to produce digital computers. An American philosopher,...

René Descartes

Credited as the father of analytical geometry, Descartes built the bridge between algebra and geometry that proved crucial to the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. The Cartesian coordinate system—allowing algebraic equations...

Christopher Strachey

One of the founders of denotational semantics and a pioneer in programming language design, Strachey made lasting contributions to computer science. After the war he fulfilled a long-standing ambition by becoming a schoolmaster...

Gertrude Blanch

Pioneering figure in numerical analysis and computation and one of the founders of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Blanch was born Gittel Kaimowitz in Kolno, Russia (now Kolno, Poland), arrived in...

John (Jack) G. Herriot

Teacher of the first programming course at Stanford University, Herriot helped found the Computer Science Department and served as the first Director of the Stanford Computation Center, which later evolved to become...

Frederick (Fred) Jacob Damerau

Pioneer in natural language processing and data mining, Damerau spent over four decades at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, New York. Born in Parma, Ohio, son of the...

Mark Semenovich Pinsker

Known for his entropy theory of dynamical systems, which introduced the maximal partition with zero entropy, later known as Pinsker's partition, Pinsker studied stochastic processes under A. N. Kolmogorov in the 1950s,...

Lorinda Cherry

A longtime member of the original Unix Lab at Bell Labs, Cherry devoted much of her career to developing mathematical tools and utilities for text formatting and analysis, and influenced the creation...

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier

Best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series and their applications to problems of heat transfer and vibrations, Fourier left an unfinished work on determinate equations which was edited by Claude-Louis...

Victor Shoup

Co-developer of the Cramer–Shoup cryptosystem, the first efficient asymmetric encryption scheme proven to be secure against adaptive chosen ciphertext attack using standard cryptographic assumptions, Shoup is a computer scientist and mathematician. He...

Donald Ervin Knuth

Author of the landmark series *The Art of Computer Programming*, Knuth is renowned for his contributions to the analysis of algorithms and the design of programming languages. He has served as Professor...

John Rushby

Developer of the Prototype Verification System (PVS), a major impetus for the development of computer science, Rushby is a British computer scientist legendary in the field of formal methods and verification. He...

Alexander L'vovich Brudno

Best known for fully describing the alpha-beta (α-β) search algorithm, Brudno was a Russian Jewish computer scientist who lived in Israel from 1991. He developed the "mathematics/machine interface" for the M-2 computer...

Mavis Batey (née Lever)

One of Bletchley Park's most effective codebreakers, Batey joined the team in May 1940 at just 19 years old, interrupting her German-language studies at University College London. Working under the eccentric cryptographer...

Leonard Max Adleman

Co-inventor of the RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) cryptosystem, Adleman is a theoretical computer scientist and professor of computer science and molecular biology at the University of Southern California. RSA is in widespread use in...