Lionel Kattner

Contributor to the development of the first planar integrated circuit and co-founder of Signetics Corporation, Kattner is recognized as a key figure in early semiconductor history. A graduate of Southwestern University in...

Michael L. Hackworth

Co-founder of Cirrus Logic, Inc., a fabless semiconductor supplier specializing in analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP integrated circuits (ICs), Hackworth served as its Chairman of the Board, President, and CEO. Born in San...

Lewis Fry Richardson

Pioneer of fractals and the modified Richardson iteration method for solving systems of linear equations, Richardson was also an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist, and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of...

Leo F. Slattery

Designer of memory capacity for mainframe computers, Slattery was one of the earliest members of Control Data Corporation (CDC). Born and raised in St. Paul, MN, he graduated from Cretin High School in...

Margaret R. Fox

Member of the technical staff of the Electronic Computer Laboratory at the National Bureau of Standards, Fox graduated from Wisconsin State College in 1940 and joined the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1943,...

William Seward Burroughs

Inventor of the adding machine, Burroughs was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. An American inventor, born in Rochester, New York, the son of a mechanic, he worked with...

Gary Mokotoff

Pioneer of the computer software industry for the IBM 1401, Mokotoff is the co-creator of the 1401 Autocoder and sole author of SPS1 and SPS2. He joined IBM in 1959. From 1959 to...

B. (Bob) Ramakrishna Rau

Developer of the Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) technology that is now standard in modern computer processors, Rau was widely recognized as an expert in VLIW computing, which is the basis of...

Henry Edward Roberts

Designer of the first commercially successful personal computer, Roberts transformed computing in 1975. He founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) in 1970 to sell electronics kits to model rocketry hobbyists, but...

Edward (Ned) W. Barnholt

Headed the Agilent spin-off from Hewlett-Packard in 1999, Barnholt served as President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of the Board of Agilent Technologies until his retirement in 2005. Born in New York City,...

Patrick Volkerding

Founder and maintainer of the Slackware Linux distribution, Volkerding has served as Slackware's "Benevolent Dictator for Life" (BDFL), and is also known informally as "The Man". He has also contributed to the...

John (Jack) Mason Harker

Pioneer of the IBM 350 RAMAC disk storage unit — the world's first hard disk drive — Harker started as a member of the original team that developed the first disk storage...

John C. Hollar

CEO of the Computer History Museum, Hollar directed the Museum's strategic planning and operations and has been responsible for leading it toward its goal of being the world's leading institution capturing the...

Marlyn Meltzer (née Wescoff)

One of the original programmers of the ENIAC, the world's first electronic computer, Meltzer was selected for this role in 1945. A graduate of Temple University in 1942, she was hired by...

Jean Calvignac

Leader of the team responsible for the architecture of IBM network processors, Calvignac is a 1997 IBM Fellow. Network processors are an integrated circuit which has a feature set specifically targeted at...

Andrew James Viterbi

Inventor of the Viterbi algorithm, used for decoding convolutionally encoded data and still widely used in cellular phones for error correcting codes, as well as for speech recognition, DNA analysis, and many...

Frances (Fran) Elizabeth Allen

Pioneer in optimizing compilers and the first woman to win the Turing Award, Allen was also the first female IBM Fellow. Allen was an expert in the field of optimizing compilers. As a...

Eugene Edward McDonnell

Designer of IBM's first Time-Sharing system, which became a very early host to IVSYS, a predecessor of APL, McDonnell was a Computer Science pioneer and long-time contributor to the programming languages APL...

Alexey Andreevich Lyapunov

One of the founders of cybernetics and a computer pioneer in Russia, Lyapunov made foundational contributions to the development of computing and cybernetics in the Soviet Union. In 1928, Lyapunov enrolled in Moscow...

Thomas (Tommy) Harold Flowers

Designer of Colossus, the first programmable electronic computer, Flowers made one of the most significant contributions to wartime codebreaking. His first contact with the wartime codebreaking effort came when he was asked...