Hans Peter Luhn

Creator of the Luhn algorithm and KWIC (Key Words In Context) indexing, Luhn was a computer scientist for IBM whose work is in wide use today. The Luhn algorithm, or Luhn formula,...

Emil Leon Post

Best known for his work in the field that eventually became known as computability theory, Post made foundational contributions to mathematical logic and the theory of computation. In his doctoral thesis, Post proved,...

Ronald Linn Rivest

One of the inventors of the RSA algorithm (along with Adi Shamir and Len Adleman), Rivest has made ingenious contributions to making public-key cryptography useful in practice. He also invented the symmetric...

Jack Keil Wolf

Known for his work in coding theory as applied to magnetic storage, Wolf made pioneering and sustained contributions to information theory and digital information storage. He was also an expert in signal...

Robert Morris

Contributor to early versions of UNIX, Morris developed the math library, the program crypt, and the password encryption scheme used for user authentication. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and received a...

Clifford Hugh Dowker

Developer of the Dowker notation, a simple way of describing knots suitable for computers, Dowker was a topologist also known for his contributions in point-set topology, category theory, sheaf theory, and knot...

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 Richard Rice

Founder of the ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, Rice was an American mathematician and computer scientist who served as the W. Brooks Fortune Distinguished Emeritus of Computer Science and a Professor of...

Gregory John Chaitin

One of the founders of algorithmic information theory and a key figure in metamathematics, Chaitin is an Argentine-American mathematician and computer scientist born in Argentina. Beginning in the late 1960s, he made...

Richard (Dick) Manning Karp

Co-publisher with John Hopcroft of the Hopcroft–Karp algorithm, still the fastest known method for finding maximum cardinality matchings in bipartite graphs, Karp is a computer scientist and computational theorist at the University...

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...

Marvin L. Stein

One of the founding faculty members of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Minnesota, Stein served as its Director from 1958 to 1970. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he entered...

Gene Myron Amdahl

Team leader in building IBM mainframes and founder of Amdahl Corporation, Amdahl was chiefly known for his work on mainframe computers at IBM and later his own companies. He was perhaps best...

Marshall Nicholas Rosenbluth

Deriver of the Metropolis algorithm — cited in Computing in Science and Engineering (Jan. 2000) as being among the top 10 algorithms having the "greatest influence on the development and practice of...

Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp

Known for his work in information theory and combinatorial game theory, Berlekamp was one of the inventors of the Welch–Berlekamp and Berlekamp–Massey algorithms, which are used to implement Reed–Solomon error correction. While an...

Gottfried Ungerboeck

Inventor of trellis coded modulation, Ungerboeck is a pioneering researcher in digital communications. Ungerboeck received an electrical engineering degree (with emphasis on telecommunications) from Vienna University of Technology in 1964, and a Ph.D....

Henryk Zygalski

Designer of the "perforated sheets," also known as "Zygalski sheets," a manual device for finding Enigma settings, Zygalski was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma ciphers before...

Eric Horvitz

Recognized for playing a significant role in establishing the credibility of artificial intelligence, Horvitz has also helped establish the link between artificial intelligence and decision science. Horvitz coined the concept of bounded...

Daniel A. Hitchcock

Leader of the effort to expand the Magnetic Fusion Energy Computing Center into NERSC, widely regarded as the best-managed High Performance Computing Center in the world, Hitchcock joined the Department of Energy...

Frederick Jelinek

Pioneer of speech recognition, Jelinek was a Czech-American researcher in information theory, automatic speech recognition, and natural language processing, well known for his oft-quoted statement, "Every time I fire a linguist, the...