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...

Arlene Joy Harris

Pioneer of the first automated cellular service activation systems now used globally in retail locations to remotely and instantly activate cellular phones, Harris is also known as the "First Lady of Wireless"...

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,...

Einar (Stef) A. Stefferud

One of the original designers of the MIME protocol for sending multimedia Internet electronic mail, Stefferud made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly in the areas of IETF...

Christopher Latham Sholes

Inventor of the QWERTY keyboard and one of the first practical typewriters, Sholes transformed written communication. Born in Mooresburg, Pennsylvania, he moved to nearby Danville as a teenager, where he worked as...

Ole-Johan Dahl

One of the fathers of object-oriented programming and Simula, Dahl produced the initial ideas for object-oriented (OO) programming in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center (NR) as part of the Simula...

William (Bill) Worley Jr.

Principal creator of HP's two most important computer architectures, Worley's work includes PA-RISC (Precision Architecture—Reduced Instruction Set Computing) in the 1980s and PA-WW (Wide-Word) in the 1990s. He started programming in 1959 for...

Shashi Shekhar

Major contributor to data engineering and database systems, including the Connectivity-Clustered Access Method (CCAM), a new storage and access method for spatial networks, Shekhar is a McKnight Distinguished University Professor at the...

Alan Emtage

Alan Emtage conceived and implemented the first version of Archie, a pre-Web internet search engine for locating material in public FTP archives.

Gerard (Gerhard) Anton Salton

Developer of the now widely used Vector Space Model for Information Retrieval, Salton was perhaps the leading computer scientist working in the field of information retrieval during his time. Born in Nuremberg,...

Virgil Dorin Gligor

Researcher in computer security addressing problems of trustworthy computing in the presence of malware and malicious insiders, and in next-generation secure Internet design, Gligor is a Romanian-American Professor of Electrical and Computer...

Geoff Huston

Leader of the initial construction of the Internet in Australia in the late 1980s, Huston is widely regarded as the preeminent researcher on IPv4 exhaustion, routinely referenced by international agencies and frequently...

Albert Einstein

1921 Nobel Prize winner in Physics for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution...

David G. Arscott

Founder board member of the IT History Society and Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Arscott spent his entire professional career investing in private and public technology companies. In 1968, he joined the group...

George Edward Pake

Founding director of Xerox PARC, Pake led the research center during which time it invented the laser printer and pioneered the use of a computer "desktop" which functioned by clicking on "icons,"...

Patty Stonesifer

Founding CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Stonesifer built her career on executive leadership spanning technology, philanthropy, and public service. She began in various executive roles at Microsoft before taking...

Luciano Lenzini

Director of the initiative which led to the operation of the first Internet node in Italy, Lenzini has served as a Full Professor at the Information Engineering Department of the University of...

Bailey Whitfield Diffie

Pioneer of public-key cryptography, Diffie co-authored the landmark 1976 paper "New Directions in Cryptography," which introduced a radically new method of distributing cryptographic keys, going far toward solving one of the fundamental...

George Harry Heilmeier

Inventor of the LC-Display and pioneering contributor to liquid crystal displays, Heilmeier is inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, received his B.S. in Electrical...

Morris Chang

Founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Chang is sometimes called the father of Taiwan's chip industry. TSMC pioneered the "dedicated silicon foundry" industry and became the largest silicon foundry in the...