Allessandro Volta

Inventor of the battery in 1800 and a remotely operated pistol that was a significant forerunner of the telegraph, Volta transformed the understanding of electricity. He was born in Como, Italy, and taught...

David (Dave) A. Duffield

Co-founder of PeopleSoft, where PeopleSoft V1 (late 1980s) was the first fully integrated, robust client–server HRMS application suite, Duffield is an American businessman in the software industry. He has also served as...

Paul (Rusty) Russell

Writer of the packet filtering systems ipchains and netfilter/iptables in the Linux operating system kernel, Russell is an Australian free software programmer and advocate also known for his work on the Linux...

Murray Turoff

A founding father of computer-mediated communication and designer of EMISARI, Turoff was also a retired Distinguished Professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). While the term has traditionally referred to those...

Rudolf Bayer

Inventor of B-Trees and UB-Trees, Bayer is one of the most influential figures in the history of data structures and database systems. Rudolf Bayer was born in 1939 in Landshut, Germany. He...

John P. Morgridge

Former Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Cisco Systems, Morgridge is an American businessman from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin who attended Wauwatosa East High School. He received his Bachelor's Degree in...

Ravi Arimilli

Chief Architect largely responsible for the development of the IBM POWER5, Arimilli has been named an IBM Fellow, the company's highest technical honor, in May 2001. One of the most prolific inventors...

Bruce Eckel

Author of "Thinking in Java" and "Thinking in C++", Eckel has written numerous books and articles about computer programming. He has also given frequent lectures and seminars for computer programmers. His best...

Martin Richards

Creator of the BCPL programming language, Richards is a computer scientist whose work has had lasting influence on modern programming. In 1959 he came to Cambridge to read Mathematics, followed by the...

Gerd Binnig

Co-inventor of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and Nobel Prize winner in Physics (1986), Binnig was born in Frankfurt am Main and played in the ruins of the city during his childhood....

Srini Devadas

Co-inventor of silicon Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and co-founder of Verayo, a company focused on improving the security of computer hardware, Devadas has served as the Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical...

Nicholas (Nick) John Pippenger

Co-inventor of extendible hashing, Pippenger is recognized for a number of fundamental results widely used in theoretical computer science, database processing, and compiler optimization. He held a B.S. degree in Natural Sciences...

Charles Babbage

Designer of the first mathematical computer, Babbage was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor, and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display...

Judith (Judy) L. Estrin

Leader of the team that developed one of the first commercial local area network systems, Z-net, Estrin is an American business executive and technology entrepreneur who co-founded seven companies with Bill Carrico. She...

Wesley Allison Clark

One of the main participants, along with Charles Molnar, in the creation of the LINC laboratory computer — the first mini-computer and one of the inspirations for the personal computer — Clark...

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...

Gabe Logan Newell

Producer of the first three releases of Windows, Newell later founded Valve, producing one of the best-selling PC games ever, Half-Life.

Harry Lewis Nelson

Co-discoverer of the 27th Mersenne prime in 1979, which was at that time the largest known prime number, Nelson is also recognized as one of the world's foremost experts in writing optimized...

Danny (Dan) Spracklen

Co-programmer of the Chafitz ARB Sargon 2.5, the first commercial dedicated chess computer with an Auto Response Board (ARB), Spracklen is an American computer scientist and microcomputer chess pioneer. Born in Decatur,...

Ding Wen Lim

Deemed the world's youngest iPhone developer at age 9, Lim is a programmer from Singapore responsible for the app Doodle Kids. Born September 21, 1999, he was thrust into the media spotlight...