Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace

Known as the "World's First Computer Programmer," Lovelace wrote notes on Charles Babbage's analytical engine that include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine. An...

Alexander Bain

Inventor of the electric clock and pioneer of the telegraph, Bain transformed early communications technology. His first patent was dated January 11, 1841, and was in the names of John Barwise, chronometer...

Philip Stuart Milner-Barry

One of four leading codebreakers at Bletchley Park to petition Prime Minister Winston Churchill directly for more resources for their work, Milner-Barry was also a British chess player, chess writer, and civil...

John Adam Presper Eckert, Jr.

Co-inventor of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, Eckert was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly, he presented the first course in computing topics (the Moore School...

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Discoverer of the binary number system and independent co-inventor of infinitesimal calculus, Leibniz occupied a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of philosophy. He developed the infinitesimal calculus...

Giovanni Caselli

Inventor of the pantelegraph (a.k.a. Universal Telegraph or "all-purpose telegraph"), the predecessor of the modern fax machine, Caselli put the world's first practical operating facsimile machine ("fax") system into use. Pantèlègraph is...

Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen

Famous for constructing The Turk, a chess-playing automaton later revealed to be a hoax, Kempelen was also a Hungarian author and inventor with Irish ancestors, born in Pressburg, Kingdom of Hungary, Habsburg...

John Ambrose Fleming

Inventor of the first thermionic valve or vacuum tube, Fleming transformed the foundations of modern electronics. After leaving the University of Nottingham in 1882, Fleming took up the post of "Electrician" to...

Johannes Kepler

Best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, Kepler was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer and a key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution. His laws were codified by...

Thomas John Watson, Sr.

Former CEO of IBM who oversaw the company's growth into an international force from 1914 to 1956, Watson developed IBM's renowned management style and corporate culture, and turned the company into one...

Ramon Llull

A pioneer of computation theory, Llull was a Majorcan writer and philosopher who wrote the first major work of Catalan literature. Recently-surfaced manuscripts show him to have anticipated, by several centuries, prominent...

Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet

Considered one of the fathers of information science, Otlet was an author, entrepreneur, visionary, lawyer, and peace activist whose writings have sometimes been called prescient of the current World Wide Web. He...

Rudolf Hell

Inventor of the Hellschreiber, an early forerunner to the fax machine, Hell was a German engineer born in Eggmühl, Germany, who studied electrical engineering in Munich from 1919 to 1923. While there...

Semen Nikolaevich Korsakov

Noted homeopath and early information technology inventor, Korsakov took part in the Napoleonic Wars with the Russian Army from 1812–1814. He later served as an official in the statistics department of the...

Doulgas Rayner Hartree

English mathematician and physicist, Hartree was most famous for the development of numerical analysis and its application to the Hartree-Fock equations of atomic physics and the construction of the meccano differential analyzer.

Wilhelm Schickard

Inventor of many machines, including one for calculating astronomical dates and one for Hebrew grammar, Schickard was a universal scientist whose research spanned astronomy, mathematics, and surveying. He taught biblical languages such as...

Thomas Alva Edison

Credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications, Edison also developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera,...

Alonzo Church

A major contributor to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer science, Church is sometimes called the father of theoretical computer science. He is best known for the lambda calculus, the...

Georg (Per) Pehr Scheutz

Co-developer of the Scheutzian calculation engine, which produced the first tables calculated and printed by machinery, Scheutz was a 19th-century Swedish lawyer, translator, and inventor. He studied law at Lund University, graduating...

Charles Galton Darwin

Known for assisting Henry Moseley on X-ray diffraction, Darwin was an English physicist and the grandson of Charles Darwin who also served as Director of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) during the...