Jim Tice Ellis

Co-creator of Usenet, Ellis changed how people communicate online. It was 1979 when Ellis and a fellow Duke University student, Tom Truscott, decided to use e-mail programs and university computers to establish...

Michael (Mike) Lazaridis

Founder of Research In Motion (RIM), Lazaridis co-created and manufactured the BlackBerry wireless handheld device. He has also served as chancellor of the University of Waterloo, and is an Officer of the...

Bill Atkinson

Creator of HyperCard and co-founder of General Magic, Atkinson was also part of the Apple Macintosh development team and creator of the ground-breaking MacPaint application, among others. He also designed and implemented...

Edwin Earl Catmull

A pioneer of computer graphics and former President of both Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios, Catmull has contributed to many important developments in computer graphics. He was born in...

John Bardeen

Co-inventor of the transistor and the only person to have won the Nobel Prize in Physics twice, Bardeen was an American physicist and electrical engineer. He received the prize first in 1956...

Irma M. Wyman

The first woman to become Vice President of Honeywell, Inc., Wyman was also the first female CIO of Honeywell and a Systems Thinking tutor (the process of understanding how things influence one...

Karl Kempf

Pioneer in applying advanced mathematics to industrial and engineering challenges, Kempf is best known for heading a group of mathematicians at Stanford University who built computer models allowing Intel to design financial...

Wesley W. Chu

Pioneer researcher in file allocation and directory design for distributed databases, Chu's work aided the design and development of domain name servers and current cloud computing systems. He has served as a...

Steven (Steve) L. Scott

An expert in high performance computer architecture and interconnection networks, Scott has worked as a computer architect at Cray Research, Inc., Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), and Cray, Inc., and has also served...

Tim Westergren

Founder and CEO of Pandora, Westergren started the Music Genome Project, a mathematical algorithm to organize music. The idea was marketed by Pandora Media. Westergren, along with the other developers, patented the...

Alice Rowe Burks

One of 75 females employed as a "woman computer" performing mathematical calculations before electronic computers became commercially available, and co-publisher of the definitive Who Invented the Computer? in 2003, Burks was also...

Henry (Hank) Wallman

Co-builder of the Electronic Differential Analyser, an early example of an analog computer, Wallman also performed pioneering research in biomedical engineering combining video displays with X-ray imaging. An American mathematician known for...

Niels Ivar Bech

Leader of the group that formed Regnecentralen, the first Danish computer company, Bech shaped the course of Danish computing history. He led a group that started as an advisory board formed by...

Hong-Jiang Zhang

A leader in establishing Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) into a world-class basic research center in computer science, Zhang has been a prominent researcher in media computing, more specifically in video and image...

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier

Best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series and their applications to problems of heat transfer and vibrations, Fourier left an unfinished work on determinate equations which was edited by Claude-Louis...

Steven (Steve) Paul Jobs

Co-founder and CEO of Apple, Jobs was an American business magnate who also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios. He became a member of the board of The Walt...

Brian Wilson Kernighan

Co-author of the first book on the C programming language and programmer of well-known Unix utilities such as ditroff and cron, Kernighan worked at Bell Labs alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and...

Evan Williams

Co-founder of Twitter, Williams also founded several other Internet companies, including Pyra Labs (creator of weblog-authoring software Blogger), and has served as CEO of Twitter.

Safiya Umoja Noble

Author of the landmark 2018 book "Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism," Noble brought rigorous academic scrutiny to the ways search engine algorithms can perpetuate racism and discrimination. She became...

Toru Takahashi

Writer of the first Japanese book on the Internet, Takahashi is sometimes known as the "Mother of the Internet" in Japan. He was instrumental in bringing the Internet to Japan and promoting...