Phillip Walter Katz

Co-creator of the zip file format for data compression and author of PKZIP, a program for creating zip files which ran under DOS, Katz graduated from the Computer Science Engineering program at...

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...

W. (Rick) Richards Adrion

Founder of the Applied Computing Systems Institute of Massachusetts, Adrion has served as a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He served as PI for an NSF REU Site,...

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...

Harry Lewis Nelson

Co-discoverer of the 27th Mersenne prime in 1979, which was at that time the largest known prime number, Nelson is also recognized as one of the world's foremost experts in writing optimized...

Marlyn Meltzer (née Wescoff)

One of the original programmers of the ENIAC, the world's first electronic computer, Meltzer was selected for this role in 1945. A graduate of Temple University in 1942, she was hired by...

Evelyn Boyd Granville

Part of the IBM team responsible for formulating orbit computations and computer procedures for NASA's Projects Vanguard and Mercury, Granville was also one of the first African-American women to receive a Ph.D....

Robert (Bob) Stanley Barton

Chief architect of the Burroughs B5000, Barton was also a co-inventor of dataflow. His thinking was broadly influential. As one example, Barton influenced the systems and higher-level computer language thinking of Alan Kay,...

Ernest (Lee) E. Keet

Founder of Turnkey Systems, Inc. (TSI) and founding director of both the Charles Babbage Foundation and the IT History Society, Keet helped launch one of the pioneering commercial software firms of the...

Liang-Jie (LJ) Zhang

Lead architect for IBM HotVideo HyperVideo technology, Zhang is a computer scientist formerly at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where he served as a Research Staff Member (RSM) and Program Manager...

Marc Snir

Leader of the research group responsible for major contributions to the IBM SP scalable parallel system and to the IBM Blue Gene system, Snir is a parallel computing expert whose research and...

Joseph (Joe) A. Piscopo

Founder of Pansophic Systems in 1969, Piscopo built the Lisle, Illinois software firm into a major enterprise before retiring as its Chairman and C.E.O. in 1987 after 18 years. Previously, he had...

Marie desJardins

Researcher focused on understanding trust among agents in online communities, desJardins has led the Multi-Agent, Planning and Learning Lab (MAPLE) at UMBC, which focuses on developing A.I. solutions to real world problems....

Andrei Zary Broder

Co-inventor of the first practical test to prevent robots from masquerading as humans and accessing web sites — often referred to as CAPTCHA — Broder has served as a Distinguished Scientist at...

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...

Edward Fredkin

A pioneer of reversible computing and cellular automata, Fredkin was also an early pioneer of digital physics, later using the term digital philosophy (DP) to describe his work. While Konrad Zuse's book,...

Laura Haas

Best known for her work on the Starburst query processor, from which DB2 UDB was developed, Haas became a 2009 IBM Fellow and has served as Director of Computer Science at IBM...

Randy Pausch

Noted professor of computing, Pausch was a co-founder of Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center and founder of the Alice software project. Randy Pausch was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and grew up...

Michael (Mike) J. Karels

Key contributor to the history of BSD UNIX, Karels was an American software engineer who graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology. He went on...

Peter R. Samson

Creator of the Harmony Compiler for the PDP-1 and the Expensive Planetarium star display for Spacewar!, Samson is an American computer scientist best known for creating pioneering computer software. He studied at...