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,...

Vannevar Bush

The first presidential science advisor, Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a...

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...

Enrico Fermi

Inventor of the FERMIAC, an analog computer that used the Monte Carlo Method to study neutron transport through fissionable materials, Fermi was an Italian-born, naturalized American physicist particularly known for his work...

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...

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...

Shaun Wylie

A key member of Hut 8 at Bletchley Park, Wylie worked alongside Alan Turing on solving the Enigma machine as used by the German Navy. He was born in Oxford, England, the...

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...

Charles Ranlett Flint

Founder of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), which later became IBM, Flint transformed the landscape of business computing. In 1868, Charles Flint graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, and in 1871 entered the...

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...