James (Jim) Nicholas Gray

Pioneer of granular database locking, two-tier transaction commit semantics, and the data cube operator for data warehousing applications, Gray transformed the field of database and transaction processing systems. Gray studied at the University...

Daniel L. Murphy

Creator of Text Editor and Corrector (TECO), later implemented on most PDP computers, Murphy is an American computer scientist. He attended MIT from 1961 and graduated in 1965. In 1962 he created...

Aart J. de Geus

One of the world's leading experts on logic synthesis and simulation, de Geus is the founder, Chairman and CEO of Synopsys Inc., a fellow of IEEE, and Phil Kaufman Award winner. He...

Lawrence Moser Breed

Creator of the first computer animation language and system, Breed built it as an undergraduate at Stanford University in 1961 and used it at Stanford football half-times to coordinate images produced by...

Frances Spence (née Bilas)

One of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer, Spence was born Frances Bilas in Philadelphia in 1922. She attended Temple University but then was awarded a scholarship to Chestnut Hill College,...

Donald Michie

Developer of the Machine Educable Noughts And Crosses Engine (MENACE), one of the first programs capable of learning to play a perfect game of Tic-Tac-Toe, Michie was a British researcher in artificial...

Charles F. Goldfarb

Known as the "father" of SGML and "grandfather" of HTML and the World Wide Web, Goldfarb co-invented the concept of markup languages. He was a graduate of Columbia College and held a...

Mark Edwin Kriegsman

Developer of large-scale rule-based, statistical, and text-processing AI systems, Kriegsman is an American entrepreneur, computer programmer, inventor, and writer. His fascination with computers caught the attention of a local newspaper in 1979,...

Nestor Burtnyk

Father of the multimillion-dollar computer animation industry, Burtnyk pioneered animation technology that transformed the field. Born in Ethelbert, Manitoba to Ukrainian immigrants, he began Canada's first major computer graphics research project in...

Simon Phipps

Instrumental in IBM's involvement in the Java programming language, Phipps founded IBM's Java Technology Center. A computer scientist and web and open source advocate, he left IBM for Sun Microsystems in 2000,...

John Cocke

Considered by many to be the father of RISC architecture, Cocke was an American computer scientist recognized for his large contributions to computer architecture and optimizing compiler design. John Cocke was born on...

Stephen (Steve) Walker

Member of the team that developed ARPAnet, the breakthrough packet switching system that evolved into the Internet, Walker is an American engineer who is nationally recognized for his pioneering work on the...

Nathan Rochester

Designer of the IBM 701, the first general-purpose, mass-produced computer, Rochester was also the writer of the first symbolic assembler and a founding participant in the field of artificial intelligence. Nathan Rochester received...

Charles A. Csuri

Pioneer in digital fine art and computer animation, Csuri was best known for pioneering the field of computer graphics, computer animation, and digital fine art, creating his first computer art in 1964....

John A Gosden

Pioneer of LEO software development and EDP standards, Gosden was a key figure in the world's first business computing applications. John joined J. Lyons as a trainee programmer in 1953 just a few...

Alan Jay Perlis

A pioneer in advanced programming techniques and compiler construction, Perlis was the first recipient of the ACM Turing Award in 1966, sometimes called the "Nobel Prize of Computing." Perlis was born on April...

Jim Barton

Inventor of the modern digital video recorder, which allows consumers to view television programming on their own schedules, Barton co-founded TiVo Inc. and set the technical vision for the company. Barton has served...

Alexander L'vovich Brudno

Best known for fully describing the alpha-beta (α-β) search algorithm, Brudno was a Russian Jewish computer scientist who lived in Israel from 1991. He developed the "mathematics/machine interface" for the M-2 computer...

Guy Lewis Steele

Noted for designing and documenting several computer programming languages, Steele has served on accredited standards committees ECMA TC39 (ECMAScript, for which he was editor of the first edition), X3J11 (the C language),...

Tōru Iwatani

Creator of Pac-Man, one of the most popular arcade games of all time, Iwatani is a Japanese video game designer. He was born in the Meguro ward of Tokyo, Japan, and joined...