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...

Stanisław Marcin Ulam

Originator of the concept of the technological singularity, Ulam was also a renowned mathematician of Polish-Jewish origin who participated in America's Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons, suggested the...

Irene Greif

Inventor of the Version Manager — consistently designated by analysts as the most significant group-enabling feature in spreadsheets — Greif is an American computer scientist and a founder of the field of...

John L. Gustafson

Acclaimed for his work in High Performance Computing (HPC), Gustafson is most known for the invention of Gustafson's Law, introducing the first commercial computer cluster, measuring with QUIPS, and leading the reconstruction...

Thomas M. Cover

Known for developing the relationship between information theory and statistics, Cover served as past President of the IEEE Information Theory Society and was a Fellow of the Institute for Mathematical Statistics and...

Johannes Kepler

Best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer and a key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution. His laws were codified by...

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...

Evgenii Mikhailovich Landis

Co-inventor of the AVL tree data structure, Landis worked with Georgy Adelson-Velsky to produce one of the most influential innovations in computer science. In 1946, Aleksandr Kronrod and Landis reinvented Sard's Lemma, which...

John von Neumann

Generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians in modern history, von Neumann made major contributions to a vast range of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, continuous...

Isaac Newton

Stating the three universal laws of motion that enabled many of the advances of the Industrial Revolution and are still the underpinnings of the non-relativistic technologies of the modern world, Newton also...

Peter John Landin

One of the first to realize that the lambda calculus could be used to model a programming language, Landin made contributions essential to the development of both functional programming and denotational semantics....

Charles Babbage

Designer of the first mathematical computer, Babbage was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor, and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display...

George Boole

Inventor of Boolean logic, Boole was one of the most influential mathematicians in history. His father, John Boole (1779–1848), was a tradesman of limited means, but of "studious character and active mind"....

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...

Irving Stoy Reed

Co-inventor of the Reed-Solomon error-detecting and correcting codes, Reed made many contributions to areas of electrical engineering including radar, signal processing, and image processing. He was part of the team that built...

Roger Michael Needham

Head of Cambridge University Computing Laboratory and designer of influential cryptography and security systems, Needham was a major figure in computer science. A Mathematics and Philosophy graduate from Cambridge University in the...

Stephen Warshall

Developer of the transitive closure algorithm known as Warshall's algorithm, Warshall made foundational contributions to graph analysis for finding shortest paths in a weighted graph. Born in New York City, Warshall went to...

Victor Mayer Amédée Mannheim

Inventor of the modern slide rule, Mannheim standardized the design that remained in common use until pocket calculators took over. After graduating from the École d'Application in Metz, Mannheim became an officer of...

Martin Edward Hellman

Co-inventor of public key cryptography, Hellman co-authored with Whitfield Diffie the landmark 1976 paper *New Directions in Cryptography*. It introduced a radically new method of distributing cryptographic keys, which went far toward...

Mina Spiegel Rees

Pioneer of federally funded computer research and development and the first woman president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Rees transformed the landscape of postwar American science. She was...