C. Michael Armstrong

Responsible for the development and manufacture of minicomputers, personal computers, and software at IBM, Armstrong is a business executive who also led Hughes Aircraft, AT&T, and Comcast as Chairman and CEO. Born in...

Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov

Creator of Tetris, Pajitnov developed the iconic game with the help of Dmitry Pavlovsky and Vadim Gerasimov in 1985. The game, first available in the Soviet Union, appeared in the West in...

Galileo Galilei

Called "the Father of Modern Science," Galilei played a major role in the Scientific Revolution, including landmark improvements to the telescope and the invention of an improved military compass. He was born...

Robert L. Patrick

Designer of the first operating system — a non-stop multi-user batch processing operating system for the IBM 704 — Patrick entered the computer field in 1955. While at Convair, in Ft. Worth,...

Samuel Reid Warren, Jr.

Supervisor of the EDVAC project at the Moore School, Warren spent the bulk of his career at the University of Pennsylvania. Born in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, he was the...

Lynn Conway

Pioneer of the Mead and Conway revolution in VLSI design, Conway transformed the field of electronic chip design and automation. Conway joined Xerox PARC in 1973, where she led the "LSI Systems" group...

Samuel J. Palmisano

CEO of IBM, one of the world's largest technology companies, Palmisano has served as the company's chief executive officer, president, and chairman. He served as CEO from March 2002 and was elected...

Philippe Kahn

Creator of the first camera phone and founder of Borland Software and other technology companies, Kahn has built an extraordinary entrepreneurial legacy. He founded four successful companies: Fullpower Technologies, Starfish Software, Lightsurf...

Jerome (Jerry) Howard Saltzer

Contributor to the End-to-end principle in systems design — one of the important underlying principles governing the operation of the Internet — Saltzer is a computer scientist who made many notable contributions....

Jignesh M. Patel

Founder of Locomatix, a "location aware services" technology named one of the 20 hottest startups by MobileBeat in 2010 and highlighted in the Innovation Showcase at CTIA, Patel is a Professor of...

Partha Ranganathan

Co-developer of the publicly distributed Rice Simulator for ILP Multiprocessors (RSIM), Ranganathan contributed to what was at that time the only publicly-distributed software for simulating shared-memory multiprocessors with state-of-the-art instruction-level-parallel (ILP) processors. A...

George Robert Stibitz

Recognized as one of the fathers of the modern digital computer for his work with Bell Labs in the 1930s and 1940s, Stibitz completed a relay-based calculator in November 1937 he dubbed...

Richard (Dick) Mandelbaum

Co-founder of NYSERNet, the first nongovernment Internet service provider (ISP), Mandelbaum started out as a Theoretical Mathematician and became a Professor of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering. He has also served...

Robert Morris

Contributor to early versions of UNIX, Morris developed the math library, the program crypt, and the password encryption scheme used for user authentication. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and received a...

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...

John William Mauchly

Co-inventor of ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic digital computer, Mauchly worked alongside J. Presper Eckert to design EDVAC, BINAC, and UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer made in the United States....

Sandra L. Kurtzig

The first woman to take a high-tech company public, Kurtzig founded ASK Computer Systems Inc. and developed Manman, an ERP program that ran on Hewlett-Packard minicomputers and helped manufacturing companies plan materials...

Charles Kuen Kao

Pioneer in the development and use of fiber optics in telecommunications, Kao is known as the "Godfather of Broadband," "Father of Fiber Optics," and "Father of Fiber Optic Communications." He was jointly...

Nobuo Mii

Leader of a team that built the first television system in Kyushu, Japan, Mii accomplished this feat in 1949 as manager of his high school Wireless Communications Club, mainly using electronic parts...

Edward Hance Shortliffe

Pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence in medicine, Shortliffe is best known as the principal developer of the clinical expert system MYCIN, one of the first rule-based artificial intelligence expert systems,...