Isaac Newton

Stating the three universal laws of motion that enabled many of the advances of the Industrial Revolution and are still the underpinnings of the non-relativistic technologies of the modern world, Newton also...

Jagadish Chandra Bose

Named by IEEE as one of the fathers of radio science, Bose pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made very significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of...

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...

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,...

Wilhelm Schickard

Inventor of many machines, including one for calculating astronomical dates and one for Hebrew grammar, Schickard was a universal scientist whose research spanned astronomy, mathematics, and surveying. He taught biblical languages such as...

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...

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...

Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet

Considered one of the fathers of information science, Otlet was an author, entrepreneur, visionary, lawyer, and peace activist whose writings have sometimes been called prescient of the current World Wide Web. He...

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...

Edvard Georg Raphael Scheutz

Co-developer of the Scheutzian calculation engine that produced the first tables calculated and printed by machinery, Scheutz made pioneering contributions to mechanical computation alongside his father, Pehr George Scheutz. He began his...

John Logie Baird

Inventor of the first publicly demonstrated television system, Baird was also credited with creating the world's first fully electronic colour television tube. Although Baird's electromechanical system was eventually displaced by purely electronic...

Henryk Zygalski

Designer of the "perforated sheets," also known as "Zygalski sheets," a manual device for finding Enigma settings, Zygalski was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma ciphers before...

Edith Clarke

Pioneer of electrical engineering and the inventor of the Clarke calculator, Clarke broke barriers as the first woman to earn an M.S. in electrical engineering from MIT. Clarke studied mathematics and astronomy at...

Grace M. Hopper

Developer of COBOL and pioneering computer scientist, Hopper was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and she developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. She...

George Robert Stibitz

Recognized as one of the fathers of the modern digital computer for his work with Bell Labs in the 1930s and 1940s, Stibitz completed a relay-based calculator in November 1937 he dubbed...

John Adam Presper Eckert, Jr.

Co-inventor of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, Eckert was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly, he presented the first course in computing topics (the Moore School...

Karl Ferdinand Braun

Inventor of the cathode-ray tube, Braun built the first such device in 1897 — known as the "Braun Tube" in German-speaking countries. During the development of radio, he also worked on wireless...

Howard Hathaway Aiken

Pioneer in computing and original concept designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer, Aiken transformed early computing with his vision of electro-mechanical calculation. Howard studied at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and later obtained...

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.

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...