Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin

Inventor of a television transmitting and receiving system employing cathode ray tubes, Zworykin was a Russian-American engineer and pioneer of television technology. He played a role in the practical development of television...

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...

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege

Considered one of the founders of modern logic, Frege made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. As a philosopher, he is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for...

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...

Fredrik Rosing Bull

Known for his works on improved punched card machines, Bull was an information technology pioneer. In 1907 he finished his studies in civil engineering at the Technical School of Kristiania (Kristiania Tekniske...

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...

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...

Samuel Hawks Caldwell

Best known for his contributions to early computers, Caldwell was an American electrical engineer who completed his degrees in electrical engineering at MIT. His M.Sc. thesis was entitled Electrical Characteristics and Theory...

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...

Nikola Tesla

A major contributor to the birth of commercial electricity and revolutionary developer in the field of electromagnetism, Tesla was an inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer who is best known for his...

Samuel Finley Breese Morse

Co-inventor of Morse code and contributor to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system, Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts. After attending Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, he went on to Yale...

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...

Helmut Theodor Schreyer

Co-developer of the Z3, one of the first computers, Schreyer also developed an electrical circuit to convert decimal to binary numbers. He was a German inventor and the son of the minister...

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...

Charles Sanders Peirce

As early as 1886, Peirce saw that logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits, the same idea that was used decades later to produce digital computers. An American philosopher,...

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,...

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"....

Francis (Frank) E. Hamilton

Responsible for the primary organization, design, and construction of the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Mark I) and the IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC), Hamilton was a pivotal figure in early computing....

John William Mauchly

Co-inventor of ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic digital computer, Mauchly worked alongside J. Presper Eckert to design EDVAC, BINAC, and UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer made in the United States....