Isidor Isaac Rabi

Co-founder of CERN and Nobel laureate in Physics, Rabi was a Galician-born American physicist born into a traditional Jewish family in Rymanów, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Poland), and was brought to the United...

Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwārizmī

Presenter of the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations in Arabic, al-Khwārizmī was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer—a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad whose life spanned...

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....

Lewis Fry Richardson

Pioneer of fractals and the modified Richardson iteration method for solving systems of linear equations, Richardson was also an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist, and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of...

Shaun Wylie

A key member of Hut 8 at Bletchley Park, Wylie worked alongside Alan Turing on solving the Enigma machine as used by the German Navy. He was born in Oxford, England, the...

Vannevar Bush

The first presidential science advisor, Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a...

George Barnard Grant

One of the few Americans to make a significant contribution to mechanical computation prior to the end of the nineteenth century, Grant improved on the Difference Machine calculator and is recognized as...

Charles Xavier Thomas

Known for designing and patenting the first mechanical calculator, Thomas introduced the Arithmometer in 1820, though more than thirty years passed before its true commercialization in 1852, as he spent that intervening...

Joseph (J. J.) John Thomson

Discoverer of the electron and isotopes, and inventor of the mass spectrometer, Thomson was a British physicist and Nobel laureate born in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England. His early education took place in...

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,...

Paul Eisler

Inventor of the printed circuit board, Eisler forfeited rights to his invention when he neglected to read the contract before signing it. In 1941 Paul was able to engage Henderson and Spalding,...

Izrael Abraham Staffel

Inventor of a calculating machine able to add, subtract, divide, multiply, and obtain a square root, Staffel was a Polish inventor, watchmaker, mechanic, and designer of calculating machines, born in 1814 in...

Alexander Graham Bell

Inventor of the first practical telephone, Bell was also an eminent scientist, engineer, and innovator whose later work made groundbreaking contributions to optical telecommunications, hydrofoils, and aeronautics. Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had...

Emil Leon Post

Best known for his work in the field that eventually became known as computability theory, Post made foundational contributions to mathematical logic and the theory of computation. In his doctoral thesis, Post proved,...

Victor Mayer Amédée Mannheim

Inventor of the modern slide rule, Mannheim standardized the design that remained in common use until pocket calculators took over. After graduating from the École d'Application in Metz, Mannheim became an officer of...

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...

William Gordon Welchman

One of four signatories to an influential letter delivered personally to Winston Churchill in October 1941 asking for more resources for the code-breaking work at Bletchley Park, and teacher of the first...

Pierre Jaquet-Droz

Creator of animated dolls, or automata, devices which some consider to be the oldest examples of the computer, Jaquet-Droz lived in Paris, London, and Geneva, where he designed and built these mechanisms...

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...

David Hilbert

One of the founders of proof theory and mathematical logic, Hilbert's work laid the basis for recursion theory and later theoretical computer science. He was recognized as one of the most influential...