Martin (John) M. Atalla

Co-inventor of the MOSFET and considered the "Father of the PIN," Atalla distinguished himself as an engineer, innovator, entrepreneur, and visionary in the fields of semiconductor fabrication and computer data security. Born...

Alexander Matveevich Poniatoff

Founder of AMPEX, Poniatoff established the company in 1944, using his initials, A.M.P., plus "ex" for "excellence" to create the name. The high-frequency bias technique, which made quality recording possible, was invented...

Federico Faggin

Co-designer of the world's first microprocessor, Faggin is recognized as a foundational figure in modern computing. After obtaining his university degree, he worked at SGS Fairchild in Italy, where he developed SGS's...

Tom van Vleck

Co-author of the first email program for the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), one of the first time-sharing operating systems, van Vleck is an American computer software engineer. He worked at MIT on...

Phaedon Avouris

Innovator of the potential for carbon nanotubes to compete with the long-established silicon transistor for important information technology applications, Avouris is a Greek chemical physicist who has served as an IBM Fellow...

Steven (Steve) L. Scott

An expert in high performance computer architecture and interconnection networks, Scott has worked as a computer architect at Cray Research, Inc., Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), and Cray, Inc., and has also served...

Monty M. Denneau

Pioneer in high-performance computer design, Denneau received the 2002 Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award for "ingenious and sustained contributions to designs and implementations at the frontier of high performance computing leading to...

Justin Rattner

Visionary of the Department of Energy ASCI Red System, the first computer to sustain one trillion operations per second (one teraFLOPS) and the fastest computer in the world between 1996 and 2000,...

Harold Cohen

Author of the celebrated AARON program, an ongoing research effort in autonomous machine (art making) intelligence, Cohen is recognized as one of the few artists ever to have become deeply involved in...

James (Jim) M. Williams

Helped to found and expand Linear Technology, Williams was a talented analog circuit designer and technical author. He worked for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1968–1979), Philbrick, National Semiconductor (1979–1982), and Linear...

Edmund Callis Berkeley

Author of the landmark 1949 book Giant Brains, or Machines That Think, Berkeley became famous for describing the principles behind computing machines and surveying the most prominent examples of the time, including...

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...

Edward S. Davidson

Designer and implementer of an eight-node symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) system whose architecture is used by most multiprocessor systems today, Davidson pioneered pipelining techniques for improving processor throughput in both hardware and software,...

Vern Paxson

Author of the flex lexical analyzer and the Bro intrusion detection system, Paxson has served as Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also worked as...

David A. Thompson

Pioneer in the design and development of thin film magnetic head technology for use in high-density data storage, Thompson has served as Director of the Advanced Magnetic Recording Laboratory at IBM Almaden...

Hiroshi Ito

Co-inventor of "Chemically Amplified Resists," Ito made seminal contributions to modern photolithography that greatly aided the production of more powerful chips at a lower cost and contributed substantially to worldwide economic growth. Ito...

Peter P. Sorokin

Co-inventor of the dye laser, Sorokin and his colleague J. R. Lankard at IBM Research Laboratories used a ruby laser to excite a near infrared laser dye. Their report was quickly followed...

Gordon Kidd Teal

Developer of the first silicon transistor, Teal transformed the semiconductor industry. Born in South Dallas, Texas, he was Valedictorian at the Bryan Street High School in Dallas, Texas. He earned his undergraduate...

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...

Nicholas Constantine Metropolis

Leader of the group that designed and built the MANIAC I computer in 1952 and MANIAC II in 1957, Metropolis was a Greek American physicist born in Chicago and a graduate of...