Alan Cox

Maintainer of the Linux kernel's network stack, Cox later became a maintainer of the production version of the kernel itself, one of the most critical roles in Linux development.

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...

Pal Spilling

Co-developer of the Internet Protocol and other early computer network protocols, Spilling was a Norwegian Internet pioneer and Professor Emeritus at the University of Oslo and the UNIK Graduate Center at Kjeller...

Stephen J. Fink

One of the primary developers and maintainers of the T.J. Watson Libraries for Analysis (WALA), which provides static analysis capabilities for Java bytecode and related languages, Fink has been a research scientist...

Gary Durbin

Founder of a company in 1970 that introduced Secure, an early software security product, Durbin is a software pioneer and entrepreneur with over thirty-five years of experience. He began his career specializing...

Dan Fylstra

Founding Associate Editor of BYTE Magazine and co-developer and marketer of VisiCalc, the original spreadsheet program, Fylstra has been a pioneer of the computer industry since the 1970s. In 1978 he co-founded...

John Matthew Vlissides

Co-author, as one of the "Gang of Four", of the influential software engineering textbook Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, Vlissides referred to himself as "#4 of the Gang of Four...

Curt L. Cotner

Designer and developer of many key features of DB2 for z/OS, Cotner has served as an IBM Fellow and VP/CTO for IBM Data Management. In that role, he held technical and management...

Orna Berry

The first woman to serve as chief scientist and head of the industrial R&D operation of the Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labour, Berry took on that role in 1996. An...

Kathleen Booth (née Britten)

Credited with writing the first assembly language and the design of the assembler and autocode (ARC and APE(X)C) for the Birkbeck College computers, Booth made foundational contributions to computer programming. Born in...

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...

Valerie Landau

Developer of a multi-touch interface for chorded text entry, Landau filed two patents with her colleague and mentor Douglas Engelbart. Their most recent patent (filed April 2010) describes a multitouch interface for...

Edward Hance Shortliffe

Pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence in medicine, Shortliffe is best known as the principal developer of the clinical expert system MYCIN, one of the first rule-based artificial intelligence expert systems,...

Friedrich Ludwig Bauer

First to propose the widely used stack method of expression evaluation, Bauer patented the pushdown stack in 1957, a contribution that proved foundational to modern computing. He contributed to the definition of...

Nick D'Aloisio

Designer of Summly — a program aimed to solve perceived problems with the way news articles are presented on smartphones — D'Aloisio is a British-Australian entrepreneur, computer programmer, and designer who created...

Brewster Kahle

Founder of the Internet Archive and creator of WAIS and Alexa Internet, Kahle has been a pioneering force in digital access and preservation. He was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity....

Katherine L. Morse

Developer of a compiler and operating system kernel for a neural network subprocessor, Morse has worked continually in computing since taking her first paid programming job at age 17, the summer after...

Paul A. Vixie

Author of the standard UNIX system programs SENDS, proxynet, rtty, and Vixie cron, Vixie is an American Internet pioneer and well-known Unix software author who attended George Washington High School in San...

Joshua Schachter

Creator of Delicious, GeoURL, and co-creator of Memepool, Schachter holds a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He released the first version of Delicious (then called...

Michael John Muuss

Author of the freeware network tool Ping, Muuss was a senior scientist specializing in geometric solid modeling, ray-tracing, MIMD architectures, and digital computer networks at the United States Army Research Laboratory at...