Federico Luigi Conte Menabrea

Author of the landmark 1842 "Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage, Esq." — translated and annotated by Ada Lovelace — which described many aspects of computer architecture and programming,...

Gregory Bateson

A pioneer in extending systems theory and cybernetics to the social and behavioral sciences, Bateson had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe. In the 1940s he helped...

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,...

George Boole

Inventor of Boolean logic, Boole was one of the most influential mathematicians in history. His father, John Boole (1779–1848), was a tradesman of limited means, but of "studious character and active mind"....

Ruth Teitelbaum (née Lichterman)

One of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer, Teitelbaum played a pivotal role in the rise of computers. She graduated from Hunter College with a B.Sc. in Mathematics and was hired...

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...

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...

Geoffrey William Arnold Dummer

The first person to conceptualize and build a prototype of the integrated circuit, commonly called the microchip, Dummer made this pioneering contribution in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He passed the...

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz

The first to satisfactorily demonstrate the existence of electromagnetic waves, Hertz clarified and expanded the electromagnetic theory of light that had been put forth by Maxwell. He was born in Hamburg, Germany,...

Anthony E. Siegman

Major contributor in the area of unstable resonators, lasers, and optics, Siegman was an electrical engineer and educator whose work on microwave masers and parametric devices evolved into a distinguished research and...

Lee de Forest

Inventor of the audion triode and audio and radio pioneer, De Forest had an interest in wireless telegraphy and invented the Audion in 1906. He then developed an improved wireless telegraph receiver....

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...

Jerome Namias

Instrumental in ensuring that computer-generated forecasts resembled the real atmosphere for the numerical forecasting project using the supercomputer ENIAC at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, Namias was a U.S. meteorologist...

Gustav Tauschek

Developer of numerous improvements for punched card-based calculating machines, Tauschek was an Austrian pioneer of information technology who worked in this field from 1922 to 1945. During the years 1926–1930 he worked...

Arthur Scherbius

Inventor of the cryptographic machine Enigma, Scherbius founded the company to manufacture it and transformed the history of wartime communications. He was born in Frankfurt am Main and studied electricity at the...

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier

Best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series and their applications to problems of heat transfer and vibrations, Fourier left an unfinished work on determinate equations which was edited by Claude-Louis...

Jacob Bernoulli

Known for numerous mathematical landmarks including Bernoulli Numbers and the Bernoulli Differential Equation, Bernoulli became familiar with calculus through a correspondence with Gottfried Leibniz, then collaborated with his brother Johann on various...

Gertrude Blanch

Pioneering figure in numerical analysis and computation and one of the founders of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Blanch was born Gittel Kaimowitz in Kolno, Russia (now Kolno, Poland), arrived in...

Emanuel Goldberg

Contributor of a wide range of theoretic and practical advances relating to light and media and inventor of a very early search engine, Goldberg was also the founding head of Zeiss Ikon,...

John C. Freeman

Co-developer of numerical models used in making the first successful computer weather forecasts, Freeman is recognized as a pioneer whose work made today's computer models for weather prediction possible. A native Houstonian and...