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...

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...

Warren Weaver

Writer of the memorandum "Translation" (July 1949), said to be probably the single most influential publication in the early days of machine translation, Weaver was an American scientist, mathematician, and science administrator...

James Waddell Alexander II

Founder of cohomology theory, Alexander was also a pioneer in algebraic topology who contributed to the beginnings of knot theory by defining the first of the polynomial knot invariants. He was an American...

Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander, CMG, CBE

One of the key workers on breaking the Enigma machine, Alexander made vital contributions to British codebreaking during World War II. An Irish-born British cryptanalyst, chess player, and chess writer, he was...

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...

Jerzy Witold Różycki

Inventor of the "clock" method for determining Enigma rotor positions, Różycki was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma-machine ciphers. He was born in what is now Ukraine,...

Abdal Mammad ibn M Khwrizm

Considered the founder of algebra, Khwrizm shared this credit with Diophantus. His Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala presented the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations. In the twelfth century, Latin translations of...

Curt Herzstark

Designer and manufacturer of the Curta, one of the first mechanical pocket calculators, Herzstark was an Austrian engineer and inventor. Born in Vienna, the son of Marie and Samuel Jakob Herzstark, his...

Muhammad ibn Musa al

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...

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,...

Robin Oliver Gandy

A pioneer in recursion theory, Gandy is best known for the Spector-Gandy theorem, the Gandy Stage Comparison theorem, and the Gandy Selection Theorem. A British mathematician and logician, he was a friend,...

Philibert Maurice d'Ocagne

Pioneer of nomography — the systematization of graphical calculation methods using nomograms — d'Ocagne was a French engineer and mathematician whose scientific personality soon fell into oblivion, leaving only a few milestones...

John (Jack) Clemens

Pioneer in the development of random access disk storage, Clemens was part of the IBM team that developed the RAMAC and is sometimes considered to be among those who "built" Silicon Valley....

Morton M. Astrahan

Developer of the SAGE air-defense computer and a pioneer in relational database systems, Astrahan joined IBM in 1949 and spent his entire professional career there—first at the Endicott Laboratory and then later...

Klara Dan von Neumann

One of the first computer programmers in history, Klára Dán von Neumann was also the first woman to execute modern-style code on a computer. A Hungarian-American mathematician and self-taught engineer, she made...

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...

Erwin Tomash

Early pioneer of computer equipment peripherals and co-developer of the ERA 1103 (UNIVAC Scientific), Tomash was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, and graduated from the University of Minnesota with an...

Elisha Gray

Best known for his development of a telephone prototype in 1876, Gray is considered by some writers to be the true inventor of the variable resistance telephone, despite losing out to Alexander...

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...