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...

Benoît B. Mandelbrot

Discoverer of the Mandelbrot set of intricate, never-ending fractal shapes — said to be "one of the most astonishing discoveries in the entire history of mathematics" — Mandelbrot also developed a "theory...

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....

Solomon Wolf Golomb

Inventor of Golomb coding and pioneer in combinatorial analysis and coding theory, Golomb transformed modern communications. He pioneered the identification of the characteristics and merits of maximum length shift register sequences, also...

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...

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace

Known as the "World's First Computer Programmer," Lovelace wrote notes on Charles Babbage's analytical engine that include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine. An...

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...

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...

Jorma J. Rissanen

Known for inventing arithmetic coding and the minimum description length principle, Rissanen was an IBM researcher from 1960 who received his Ph.D. from the Helsinki University of Technology in 1965. After retiring...

King-Sun Fu

A pioneer in the field of pattern recognition and machine intelligence, Fu is considered to be the "father of automatic pattern recognition," and was widely recognized for his extensive contributions to the...

Clifford Alan Pickover

Member of the team that worked on design-automation workstations and developed code for IBM's IntelliStation, Pickover is an American author, editor, inventor, and columnist in the fields of science, mathematics, and science...

Henry (Hank) Wallman

Co-builder of the Electronic Differential Analyser, an early example of an analog computer, Wallman also performed pioneering research in biomedical engineering combining video displays with X-ray imaging. An American mathematician known for...

Ole-Johan Dahl

One of the fathers of object-oriented programming and Simula, Dahl produced the initial ideas for object-oriented (OO) programming in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center (NR) as part of the Simula...

Karl Kempf

Pioneer in applying advanced mathematics to industrial and engineering challenges, Kempf is best known for heading a group of mathematicians at Stanford University who built computer models allowing Intel to design financial...

John Napier

Renowned as the discoverer of the logarithm and inventor of "Napier's bones," Napier was a Scottish mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and astrologer, and also the 8th Laird of Merchiston. He was the son...

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...

Abdal Mammad ibn M Khwrizm

Considered the founder of algebra, Khwrizm shared this credit with Diophantus. His Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala presented the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations. In the twelfth century, Latin translations of...

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...

Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander, CMG, CBE

One of the key workers on breaking the Enigma machine, Alexander made vital contributions to British codebreaking during World War II. An Irish-born British cryptanalyst, chess player, and chess writer, he was...

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...