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....

Alan Mathison Turing

The mathematical logician Alan Mathison Turing OBE (1912-1954) contributed to logic, mathematics, cryptanalysis, philosophy, mathematical biology, and formatively to computer science, Artificial Intelligence, cognitive science, and the computational study of biological growth. Turing...

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...

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...

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...

Harold Locke Hazen

Pioneer in the development of differential analyzers, Hazen collaborated with Vannevar Bush at MIT to construct the first widely practical such machine, built 1928–1931 and comprising six mechanical integrators. In the same year,...

Hedwig (Hedy) Eva Maria Lamarr (née Kiesler)

Co-inventor of an early technique for spread spectrum and frequency hopping, Lamarr paved the way for today's wireless communications. An Austrian actress and inventor, Lamarr was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. She was a...

Solomon Lefschetz

Developer of the Lefschetz fixed point theorem, now a basic result of topology, Lefschetz did fundamental work on algebraic topology, its applications to algebraic geometry, and the theory of non-linear ordinary differential...

John Napier

Renowned as the discoverer of the logarithm and inventor of "Napier's bones," Napier was a Scottish mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and astrologer, and also the 8th Laird of Merchiston. He was the son...

Michael Faraday

A father of electromagnetism and electronics, Faraday studied the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a DC electric current. While conducting these studies, he established the basis for the electromagnetic field concept...

George F. Daly

Co-developer of the IBM 285 and 297 series accounting machines and co-inventor of the automatic multiplying machines known as Types 600 and 601, Daly was a pivotal figure in IBM's early engineering...

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...

René Descartes

Credited as the father of analytical geometry, Descartes built the bridge between algebra and geometry that proved crucial to the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. The Cartesian coordinate system—allowing algebraic equations...

Willgodt Theophil Odhner

Inventor of one of the most popular portable mechanical calculators, Odhner based his solution on a geared pinwheel mechanism, resulting in the well-known barrel-shaped calculating machines bearing his name. Although calculating machines...

John Vincent Atanasoff

Inventor of the first automatic electronic digital computer, Atanasoff was raised by his parents in Brewster, Florida. At the age of nine he learned to use a slide rule, followed shortly by...

Giovanni Poleni

Builder of the first pinwheel design calculating clock, Poleni was a pioneer of mechanical computation. Made of wood, his calculating clock was built in 1709; he destroyed it after hearing that Antonius...

Claude Elwood Shannon

Developer of Information Theory, the basis for the design of communication systems and networks, Shannon also noted the importance of Boolean theory for the design of logic circuits whilst still a student...

Leopold Kronecker

A contributor to the concept of continuity and the reconstruction of irrational numbers in real numbers, Kronecker was a German mathematician who worked on number theory and algebra. He was born in...

Ramon Verea

Inventor of the first calculating machine to use direct multiplication instead of employing multiple rounds of a crank, Verea was a Spanish inventor who studied in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and emigrated...

Joseph Henry

Inventor of the electromagnetic relay that formed the basis of the electrical telegraph, Henry was also the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and a founding member of the National Institute for...