Carl Sassenrath

Creator of the Amiga Computer operating system kernel, which brought multitasking to personal computers, Sassenrath is also the designer of the REBOL computer language. Born in Eureka, California, he has served as...

Léon Bollée

Inventor of the first calculating machine, Bollée began work in 1887 on three calculating machines: the Direct Multiplier, the Calculating Board, and the Arithmographe. Bollée's Multiplier was the second successful direct-multiplying calculator...

Marcian (Ted) Edward Hoff

Inventor of the microprocessor, Hoff joined Intel in 1967 as employee number 12, and is credited with coming up with the idea of a universal processor instead of custom-designed circuits. His insight...

Stephen W. Dunwell

Lead engineer in the development of IBM's STRETCH supercomputer, Dunwell oversaw a project that was first shipped in 1962—two years before the introduction of the legendary IBM System/360. The development of STRETCH illustrates...

Richard (Dick) P. Case

Responsible for the engineering design of the IBM 1410 CPU and the IBM 7040–7044 processing systems, Case began his long and distinguished career at IBM in 1956 as a Technical Engineer. During his...

Stephen (Steve) Byram Furber

Principal designer of the BBC Micro and the ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor, Furber is probably best known for his work at Acorn Computers. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and represented...

Tamiko Thiel

Visual designer of the Thinking Machines Corp. Connection Machine (CM-1, CM-2), Thiel holds a B.S. from Stanford in general engineering/product design and also an M.S. from MIT in mechanical engineering. She has also...

Carver Andress Mead

Spearheaded of tools and techniques for modern integrated circuit design, Mead is a prominent U.S. computer scientist. Born in Bakersfield, California, he has held the position of Gordon and Betty Moore Professor...

Richard Lawrence Garwin

Co-developer of laser printers and touchscreen monitors for IBM in the 1970s, Garwin was an American physicist and IBM Fellow Emeritus at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New...

Jack St. Clair Kilby

Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 2000 for his invention of the integrated circuit, Kilby was also the inventor of the handheld calculator and thermal printer.

George M. Galambos

Designer on the team that built the Interac network connecting bank machines around the world, Galambos is a computer engineer born in Budapest, Hungary. The result was an open system that allowed...

Romuald W. Marczyński

Primary creator of the EMAL machine designs — Poland's first computers — Marczyński was a professor, mathematician, and pioneer of Polish technical computer science. He was one of the first in Poland...

Richard Lawrence Grimsdale

Designer and developer of the world's first transistorized computer, the Metrovick 950, Grimsdale was born in Australia, returned to England with his parents, and later studied electrical engineering at Manchester University, graduating...

Willem Louis van der Poel (aka William)

Designer of the ZEBRA computer, van der Poel was a pioneering Dutch computer scientist who also contributed to Algol 68 and co-built a Braille translator. In 1950 he obtained an engineering degree...

Willis Alfred Adcock

Assisted with the invention of the silicon transistor and the integrated circuit, Adcock was a Canadian-American physical chemist, electrical engineer, and university professor who also worked on the first atomic bomb. He...

Heinrich Rohrer

Co-designer of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), Rohrer shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for this invention; the other half of the Prize was awarded to...

Raymond (Ray) M. Holt

Developer of the first microprocessor chip set for the US Navy F-14 Tomcat, Holt designed this groundbreaking chip set at Garrett AiResearch's Central Air Data Computer. He co-founded Microcomputer Associates, Incorporated with...

Morton M. Astrahan

Developer of the SAGE air-defense computer and a pioneer in relational database systems, Astrahan joined IBM in 1949 and spent his entire professional career there—first at the Endicott Laboratory and then later...

Tak H. Ning

Co-inventor and developer of the polysilicon-emitter self-aligned bipolar transistor, which is the basis of all modern bipolar transistor technology, Ning has made foundational contributions to semiconductor device physics. He received his Ph.D....

Jerome Svigals

One of the world's first digital programmers, Svigals worked on developing the first electronic computer as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1950. Born in 1926 in the Bronx, New York,...