James (Jim) F. Blinn

Creator of the pre-encounter animations for the Voyager project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Blinn is one of the founders of the computer graphics industry. He has spent his career expanding industry...

Winifred (Mitchell) Baker

Instrumental in the creation of the Mozilla Foundation, Baker has served as Chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation and Chairperson and former Chief Executive Officer of the Mozilla Corporation, a subsidiary of the...

Erich Gamma

Design leader of Eclipse's Java Development Tools (JDT), Gamma is a Swiss computer scientist and co-author of the best-selling and influential software engineering textbook, "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" (Addison-Wesley,...

Edward J. Seminaro

Leader of the team responsible for establishing and executing the system design of IBM's pSeries and iSeries UNIX product family, Seminaro has served as the Chief Hardware System Architect for IBM's Power...

Paul Eisler

Inventor of the printed circuit board, Eisler forfeited rights to his invention when he neglected to read the contract before signing it. In 1941 Paul was able to engage Henderson and Spalding,...

Tu Youyou

The first female citizen of the People's Republic of China to receive a Nobel Prize in any category, Tu Youyou was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with...

Gene Howard Golub

Co-publisher of an algorithm with William Kahan in 1970 that made the computation of the singular value decomposition (SVD) feasible and that is still used today, Golub was one of the preeminent...

Victor (Vic) Dale Poor

Co-creator of the architecture that was ultimately implemented in the first successful computer microprocessor, the Intel 8008, Poor was an engineer whose designs of hardware and software led to many innovations. At...

Steve (Slug) Russell

Chief developer of Spacewar!, one of the earliest videogames, Russell is an American video game designer, programmer, and computer scientist. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, his family later moved to a small farm...

Claudio Ciborra

Known for his innovative thinking about information systems and his recognition of the relevance of transaction cost theory, Ciborra inspired researchers and thinkers around the world. He recognized the importance of tinkering,...

Nathan Rochester

Designer of the IBM 701, the first general-purpose, mass-produced computer, Rochester was also the writer of the first symbolic assembler and a founding participant in the field of artificial intelligence. Nathan Rochester received...

Fernanda Bertini Viégas

Co-creator of Many Eyes, the ground-breaking open public data visualization and analysis platform, Viégas is a Brazilian-born scientist and computational designer whose work focuses on the social, collaborative, and artistic aspects of...

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....

Kathleen (Kay) McNulty Mauchly Antonelli

One of the six original programmers of the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, Antonelli helped lay the foundations of modern computing. Kathleen (Kay) McNulty was born on February 12, 1921, in...

Jerry M. Woodall

Inventor of the first commercially viable heterojunction material GaAlAs for red LEDs used in automobile brake lights, traffic lights, CD and DVD players, TV remote controls, and computer networks, Woodall is an...

André Trương Trọng Thi

Considered to be the "father of the personal computer," Trương Trọng Thi created the Micral microcomputer in 1973—two years before the debut of the famed Altair—based on an Intel 8008 processor, the...

Oliver Selfridge

An innovator in early computer science and artificial intelligence, Selfridge helped shape the foundations of machine learning and AI. Credited with coining the term "intelligent agents" for software programs capable of observing and...

Antoni Kilinski

A noted contributor to computer science in Poland, Kilinski played a pioneering role in the development of electronic computing and digital technology. In 1948 Antoni worked in the central institutions of the Polish...

Audrey A. Helffrich

Leader of the hardware strategy for IBM's early 1990s transition from bipolar to CMOS microprocessors on its largest mainframes, Helffrich is credited with helping to save the mainframe and keeping the Poughkeepsie...

René Descartes

Credited as the father of analytical geometry, Descartes built the bridge between algebra and geometry that proved crucial to the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. The Cartesian coordinate system—allowing algebraic equations...