John George Kemeny

Co-developer of the BASIC programming language, Kemeny transformed computing by making it accessible to ordinary people. Kemeny entered Princeton University, where he studied mathematics and philosophy, but he took a year off during...

Robert B. Palmer

Member of the founding team at Mostek, where he pioneered the use of ion implantation technology for the manufacture of MOS circuits, Palmer is also known as the last Chairman and Chief...

Barry Leiba

Developer of Ultimail, an early integrated multimedia e-mail system created with his team at IBM Research, Leiba is a computer scientist and software researcher. His work focused for many years on electronic...

Matti Makkonen

Known as the father of SMS (Short Message Service) — i.e., text messaging — Makkonen was an engineer in the field of Mobile Communications. Born in Suomussalmi, Finland, he was employed (among...

Marie desJardins

Researcher focused on understanding trust among agents in online communities, desJardins has led the Multi-Agent, Planning and Learning Lab (MAPLE) at UMBC, which focuses on developing A.I. solutions to real world problems....

Karlheinz Brandenburg

Inventor of the MP3 data format, Brandenburg developed the audio compression format together with other researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute at Erlangen. He has served as a Professor at the Technical University...

Chad Meredith Hurley

Co-founder and former CEO of the popular video sharing website YouTube, Hurley is also known for co-founding MixBit. In June 2006, he was voted 28th on Business 2.0's "50 People Who Matter...

Matthew J. Szulik

Former Chairman of Red Hat, Szulik led several other technology companies, including Interleaf and MapInfo, for more than 20 years. He has also held the titles of chief executive officer and president...

Reona (Leo) Esaki

Inventor of the Esaki tunnel diode, the first quantum electron device, Esaki shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Ivar Giaever and Brian David Josephson for his discovery of the...

Phillip Walter Katz

Co-creator of the zip file format for data compression and author of PKZIP, a program for creating zip files which ran under DOS, Katz graduated from the Computer Science Engineering program at...

Sumit Ghosh

Researcher in computer architectures for next generation secure ATM network design and next generation IP router architecture to defeat next generation viruses, Ghosh has served as the Chair of the Computer Science...

Lillian F. Schwartz

Considered a pioneer of computer-mediated art, Lillian F. Schwartz was one of the first artists to base almost her entire body of work on computational media. Much of her groundbreaking work was...

Glenn John McQueen

Supervisor of computerized animation on Pixar's early films and hailed as one of the best animators in the field, McQueen's work was central to the studio's success. A Canadian supervisor of digital...

Lawrence J. Shoenberg

Noted for serving as head of three sections of ADAPSO—Software Products, Professional Services, and Information Systems Integration—Shoenberg also spent 20 years on the ADAPSO board and served a term as its chair....

Klaus Schulten

Leader of the research group that developed NAMD and VMD—molecular dynamics and visualization software now used by many thousands of researchers worldwide—Schulten was a German American computational biophysicist and the Swanlund Professor...

An Wang

Inventor and co-founder of Wang Laboratories, Wang transformed business computing through pioneering work in calculators, word processors, and minicomputers. Wang founded Wang Laboratories in June 1951 as a sole proprietorship. By 1970...

Valerie Landau

Developer of a multi-touch interface for chorded text entry, Landau filed two patents with her colleague and mentor Douglas Engelbart. Their most recent patent (filed April 2010) describes a multitouch interface for...

Renato Recio

Founding engineer and author of several IO and Network industry standards that have dramatically simplified the way virtualized data centers operate, Recio is a 2011 IBM Fellow—the highest honor a scientist, engineer,...

Guido van Rossum

Creator of the Python programming language, van Rossum is a Dutch computer programmer. In the Python community, Van Rossum is known as a "Benevolent Dictator for Life" (BDFL), meaning that he oversees the...

Marian Adam Rejewski

Solver of the plugboard-equipped Enigma machine, the main cipher device used by Germany, Rejewski was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who accomplished this feat in 1932. His success, along with his colleagues...