Gordon (Tommy) Eric Thomas

Pioneer in the design of 'Baby', the first stored program computer, Thomas graduated in Physics and Electronic Engineering at the University of Manchester in 1948, joining the design team of Professors F.C....

Bill Charles Norris

Founder of Control Data Corporation, Norris was the pioneering CEO of one of the most powerful and respected computer companies in the world. Norris was famous for taking on IBM in a...

Jakob Nielsen

Founder of the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces, Nielsen invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation — a usability inspection method for computer software that...

Irma M. Wyman

The first woman to become Vice President of Honeywell, Inc., Wyman was also the first female CIO of Honeywell and a Systems Thinking tutor (the process of understanding how things influence one...

Larry Smarr

Advocate for a high-speed network linking the National Science Foundation and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications — which became the NSFnet, one of the significant predecessors of today's Internet — Smarr...

Michael Leonidas Dertouzos

Instrumental in defining the World Wide Web Consortium and bringing it to MIT, Dertouzos served as a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Director of the M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer...

Nancy Jane Hafkin

A pioneer and innovator in networking, development information, and electronic communications in Africa, Hafkin spurred the Pan African Development Information System (PADIS) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) from...

Gayatri Buragohain

Founder of Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT), an organization empowering women in India to learn, use, and create technology, Buragohain has worked to break the stereotype that women cannot be adept at...

Severo M. Ornstein

Co-designer of Mockingbird, the first interactive computer-based music-score editor, and overseer of its programming, Ornstein is a retired computer scientist and son of Russian-American composer Leo Ornstein. He joined MIT's Lincoln Laboratory...

Joseph Weizenbaum

Creator of ELIZA, the pioneering natural language processing program that prompted his growing skepticism about artificial intelligence, Weizenbaum died March 5, 2008 in Berlin. He was 85. Joseph Weizenbaum was born on January...

Michael Stern Hart

Inventor of the electronic book (or e-book) and founder of Project Gutenberg, Hart made e-books freely available via the Internet. An American author and inventor, he attended the University of Illinois, graduating...

Richard Matthew Stallman

Founder of the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system, Stallman also launched the free software movement and was the main author of the GNU General Public License for open...

Lillian F. Schwartz

Considered a pioneer of computer-mediated art, Lillian F. Schwartz was one of the first artists to base almost her entire body of work on computational media. Much of her groundbreaking work was...

Jean Armour Polly

Inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2019, Jean Armour Polly was a librarian and author best known for her early book series on safe Internet use, "Surfing the Internet."

Clare-Marie Karat

Author of the "Computer User's Bill of Rights" and creator of a cost-benefit methodology for analyzing the return on investment in usability, Karat is a leading figure in Human Computer Interaction research....

Aaron Hillel Swartz

Co-developer of RSS, Creative Commons, web.py, and Reddit, Swartz was an American computer programmer, writer, political organizer, and Internet activist. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Susan and Robert...

Toru Takahashi

Writer of the first Japanese book on the Internet, Takahashi is sometimes known as the "Mother of the Internet" in Japan. He was instrumental in bringing the Internet to Japan and promoting...

Kristen Nygaard

Co-inventor of SIMULA and pioneer of object-oriented programming, Nygaard was a computer scientist noted for his social agenda and work with the Norwegian Trade Unions. He was a systems developer and a...

Chieko Asakawa

Co-developer of IBM software and applications that significantly improve web accessibility for the visually impaired by automatically converting text and icons on the screen to voice, Asakawa is a member of the...

Regina Honu

Founder of Soronko Academy, the first coding and human-centered design school for children and young adults in West Africa, Honu was a Ghanaian social entrepreneur and software developer who also established Soronko...