Donald Valentine

Referred to as the "grandfather of Silicon Valley venture capital," Valentine was an American venture capitalist who concentrated mainly on technology companies in the United States. Valentine grew up in the Bronx,...

Dave Smith

Known as the "Father of MIDI" for his role in developing the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, Smith pioneered many groundbreaking technologies in music. He was also responsible for the Prophet 5, the...

Gary Harpst

Co-founder of Solomon Software and designer of its pioneering accounting products, Harpst grew up in Findlay, Ohio and graduated from Ohio State University with B.A. and M.B.A. degrees in Business and Computer...

Ram Chillarege

Inventor of Orthogonal Defect Classification (ODC) technology, Chillarege has fundamentally enriched the management of software engineering. While at IBM Research, he founded the Center of Software Engineering and authored the seminal IBM...

Gordon Eubanks

Designer of CBASIC and CP/M tools, Eubanks is recognized as a microcomputer industry pioneer and one of the founding figures of the personal computer software era. While serving in the U.S. Navy, Eubanks...

Rajiv Gupta

Co-inventor and general manager of Hewlett Packard's E-speak project, Gupta also contributed as one of the developers of the IA-64 architecture. An IIT Kharagpur alumnus, Gupta received his Ph.D. in compiler optimization...

Lester (Les) Donald Earnest

Developer of the "first pen-based computer system that reliably recognized cursive writing" and the first spell checker, Earnest began his career as a computer programmer in 1954 during a stint as a...

Jerry Yang

Co-founder of Yahoo!, Yang is a Chinese American entrepreneur who also served as the company's CEO (Chief Yahoo). Born in Taiwan in 1968, Yang immigrated to the United States with his family at...

Thomas E. Osborne

Developer of the architecture for the HP9100A, an early computer, Osborne joined Hewlett-Packard in 1965 as a consultant with that responsibility. Prior to joining HP, he had designed data processing equipment, then...

William Wang

Founder and CEO of Vizio, Inc., Wang was born and raised in Taiwan, moved to Hawaii, United States at the age of 13 and then to California at the age of 14....

Charles Simonyi

Overseer of Microsoft's flagship Office applications Word and Excel, Simonyi also directed development of Excel's predecessor Multiplan. In 1981, he applied directly to Bill Gates for a job at Microsoft. With Multiplan,...

Sergy Brin

Co-founder of Google, Inc., the world's largest Internet company based on its search engine and online advertising technology, Brin built the company alongside Larry Page. Together with Page, they are often referred...

Sandra L. Kurtzig

The first woman to take a high-tech company public, Kurtzig founded ASK Computer Systems Inc. and developed Manman, an ERP program that ran on Hewlett-Packard minicomputers and helped manufacturing companies plan materials...

Martin M. Wattenberg

Co-creator of IBM's Many Eyes, a ground-breaking public visualization platform and experiment in open, public data visualization and analysis, Wattenberg is an American scientist and artist known for his work with data...

Jack Tramiel

Founder of Commodore International, Tramiel was a businessman best known for manufacturing the Commodore PET, Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Commodore Amiga, and other Commodore models of home computers. Born into a Jewish...

Niels Ivar Bech

Leader of the group that formed Regnecentralen, the first Danish computer company, Bech shaped the course of Danish computing history. He led a group that started as an advisory board formed by...

Alexander Graham Bell

Inventor of the first practical telephone, Bell was also an eminent scientist, engineer, and innovator whose later work made groundbreaking contributions to optical telecommunications, hydrofoils, and aeronautics. Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had...

Aaron Marcus

Pioneer in computer-based design, Marcus founded Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. (AM+A) in 1982, one of the first independent, computer-based design firms in the world. An American user-interface and information-visualization designer, as well...

Randy Eisenman

Founder and CEO of Handango, which he positioned as the global leader in the smartphone content market, Eisenman drove the company's strategy and built a world-class team after founding the company in...

Richard (Rick) L. Crandall

Founder of Comshare, Inc., a pioneer of computer timesharing and decision support software, Crandall is recognized as a pioneer in the Software Services Industry. He received a BS in Electrical Engineering, a...