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...

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...

Samuel Morland

Credited with early developments in relation to computing, hydraulics and steam power, Morland was a notable English academic, diplomat, spy, inventor and mathematician of the 17th century. He was educated at Winchester...

Hans Christian Ørsted

Discoverer that electric currents create magnetic fields, Ørsted made an important contribution to our understanding of electromagnetism. He shaped post-Kantian philosophy and advances in science throughout the late 19th century. He was...

James Wares Bryce

Inventor and pioneer in magnetic data storage, Bryce was one of America's most prolific inventors, credited with more than 500 U. S. and foreign patents. His death in 1949 took from the...

Herman Heine Goldstine

One of the original developers of the ENIAC, Goldstine left the University of Michigan, where he was a professor, in July 1942 to enlist in the Army after the United States entered...

Allessandro Volta

Inventor of the battery in 1800 and a remotely operated pistol that was a significant forerunner of the telegraph, Volta transformed the understanding of electricity. He was born in Como, Italy, and taught...

William Stanley Jevons

Constructed a logical machine called the Logic Piano, Jevons was a pioneering figure in both logic and economics. Jevons arrived quite early in his career at the doctrines that constituted his most...

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...

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...

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....

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...

Ramon Llull

A pioneer of computation theory, Llull was a Majorcan writer and philosopher who wrote the first major work of Catalan literature. Recently-surfaced manuscripts show him to have anticipated, by several centuries, prominent...

Carl Georg Lange Barth

Improver and popularizer of the industrial use of compound slide rules in scientific management, Barth was a Norwegian-American mathematician and mechanical engineer. He was born in Christiania, Norway, and graduated from the...

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...

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...

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...

Wallace John Eckert

A part of the creation of the research division of IBM, Eckert directed the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau at Columbia University, which evolved into that division.

Philip Stuart Milner-Barry

One of four leading codebreakers at Bletchley Park to petition Prime Minister Winston Churchill directly for more resources for their work, Milner-Barry was also a British chess player, chess writer, and civil...

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....