Patrick Carl Fischer

His work on the mathematical foundations of database query languages became central to the databases now used by major web servers worldwide. Fischer was an American computer scientist and noted researcher in...

Clare-Marie Karat

Author of the "Computer User's Bill of Rights" and creator of a cost-benefit methodology for analyzing the return on investment in usability, Karat is a leading figure in Human Computer Interaction research....

Joseph (J. J.) John Thomson

Discoverer of the electron and isotopes, and inventor of the mass spectrometer, Thomson was a British physicist and Nobel laureate born in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, England. His early education took place in...

Ian Munro Ross

Co-inventor of epitaxy, used in silicon-based manufacturing processes for BJTs and modern CMOS and particularly important for compound semiconductors such as gallium arsenide, Ross was also an early pioneer in transistors who...

Charles (Charlie) A. Zraket

Designer of the hardware and software system for the Whirlwind computer that permitted the machine to accept real-time inputs, Zraket made a truly groundbreaking contribution at that time. A pioneer in the...

John Blankenbaker

Designer and inventor of the Kenbak-1, considered by the Computer History Museum and the American Computer Museum to be the world's first "personal computer," Blankenbaker founded Kenbak Corporation in 1970, and the...

Paul A. Strassmann

Developer of new methods for evaluating the productivity of computer investments, Strassmann is a Czechoslovakian-born American engineer and business management theorist. He is also noted for his 47-minute 2005 lecture, "Information Management...

Stephen (Steve) Gary Wozniak

Co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc. with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, Wozniak is an American computer engineer whose inventions and machines are credited with contributing significantly to the personal computer revolution of...

Watts S. Humphrey

Father of Software Quality who headed the IBM software team that introduced the first software license, Humphrey was awarded the National Medal of Technology for his contributions to software engineering. He founded...

Bruce G. Buchanan

A key figure in the development of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Buchanan is University Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. He received a B.A. degree in Mathematics...

Bruce Gilchrist

Co-inventor of a fast adder incorporating a speed-up technique for asynchronous adders — a design later used in the Philco TRANSAC S-2000 (1957), the first commercial transistorized computer — Gilchrist also served...

Nolan Ira Gasser

Chief architect of the Music Genome Project and chief musicologist for Pandora Media, Inc., Gasser is an American composer, pianist, and musicologist whose proprietary musical analysis system underlies the popular Internet radio...

Robert Elliott Kahn

Co-inventor of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), Kahn is sometimes called one of the fathers of the Internet. Kahn was born on December 23, 1938, in Brooklyn, New...

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...

Niklaus Emil Wirth

Designer of programming languages including Pascal, EULER, ALGOL-W, and Modula, Wirth won the Turing Award in 1984 for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages. He was a Swiss computer scientist who...

Adriaan van Wijngaarden

One of the founding fathers of informatica (computer science) and designer of ALGOL, van Wijngaarden was a pioneering figure in the history of computing. Adriaan's education was in mechanical engineering, for which...

Charles F. Goldfarb

Known as the "father" of SGML and "grandfather" of HTML and the World Wide Web, Goldfarb co-invented the concept of markup languages. He was a graduate of Columbia College and held a...

James William Cooley

Co-developer of the Fast Fourier Transform, Cooley made one of the most significant contributions to mathematics and digital signal processing in the twentieth century. Cooley was born and raised in New York City....

Sellam Ismail

Founder of the Vintage Computer Festival and active in the preservation of information technology artifacts, Ismail has dedicated himself to salvaging countless artifacts of tech history. His prescience has led to the...

Mary Lou Soffa

Developer of software tools for debugging and testing programs to eliminate or reduce false alarms and improve operating efficiency, Soffa is an American computer scientist also noted for her research on compilers,...