List of prominent pioneers in computer science
Encyclopedia
This article presents a list of individuals who helped in the creation, development and imagining of what computer
s and electronics
could do.
~ Item marks with a tilde are circa dates
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
s and electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
could do.
| Person | Achievement | Ach. Date |
|---|---|---|
| John Atanasoff John Vincent Atanasoff John Vincent Atanasoff was an American physicist and inventor.The 1973 decision of the patent suit Honeywell v. Sperry Rand named him the inventor of the first automatic electronic digital computer... |
Built the first electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, though it was neither programmable nor Turing-complete. | 1939 |
| Charles Babbage Charles Babbage Charles Babbage, FRS was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer... |
Designed the Analytical Engine Analytical engine The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, a design for a mechanical calculator... and built a prototype for a less powerful mechanical calculator Difference engine A difference engine is an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers.-History:... . |
1822 1837 |
| John Backus John Backus John Warner Backus was an American computer scientist. He directed the team that invented the first widely used high-level programming language and was the inventor of the Backus-Naur form , the almost universally used notation to define formal language syntax.He also did research in... |
Invented FORTRAN Fortran Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing... (Formula Translation), the first practical high-level programming language, and he formulated the Backus-Naur form that described the formal language syntax Syntax In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages.... . |
1954 1963 |
| Jean Bartik Jean Bartik Jean Bartik was one of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer.She was born Betty Jean Jennings in Gentry County, Missouri, in 1924 and attended Northwest Missouri State Teachers College, majoring in mathematics. In 1945, she was hired by the University of Pennsylvania to work for Army... |
One of first computer programmers, on ENIAC ENIAC ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.... (1946), an early Vacuum tube Vacuum tube In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum... computer back when "programming" involved using cables, dials, and switches to physically rewire the machine. Worked with John Mauchly John Mauchly John William Mauchly was an American physicist who, along with J. Presper Eckert, designed ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic digital computer, as well as EDVAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer made in the United States.Together they started the first computer company,... toward BINAC BINAC BINAC, the Binary Automatic Computer, was an early electronic computer designed for Northrop Aircraft Company by the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1949. Eckert and Mauchly, though they had started the design of EDVAC at the University of Pennsylvania, chose to leave and start EMCC, the... (1949), EDVAC EDVAC EDVAC was one of the earliest electronic computers. Unlike its predecessor the ENIAC, it was binary rather than decimal, and was a stored program computer.... (1949), UNIVAC UNIVAC UNIVAC is the name of a business unit and division of the Remington Rand company formed by the 1950 purchase of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, founded four years earlier by ENIAC inventors J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and the associated line of computers which continues to this day... (1951) to develop early "Stored program" computers. |
1924 2011 |
| George Boole George Boole George Boole was an English mathematician and philosopher.As the inventor of Boolean logic—the basis of modern digital computer logic—Boole is regarded in hindsight as a founder of the field of computer science. Boole said,... |
Formalized Boolean algebra, the basis for digital logic and computer science. | 1847 1854 |
| Nikolay Brusentsov Nikolay Brusentsov Nikolay Brusentsov, born February 7, 1925 in Kamenskoe is a Russian computer scientist, most famous for having built a ternary computer, Setun, together with Sergei Sobolev in 1958.-References:... |
Built ternary computer Ternary computer A ternary computer is a computer that uses ternary logic instead of the more common binary logic in its calculations.-History:... Setun Setun Setun was a balanced ternary computer developed in 1958 at Moscow State University. The device was built under the lead of Sergei Sobolev and Nikolay Brusentsov. It was the only modern ternary computer, using three-valued ternary logic instead of two-valued binary logic prevalent in computers... . |
1958 |
| Tim Berners-Lee Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web... |
Invented worldwide web. With Robert Cailliau Robert Cailliau Robert Cailliau , born 26 January 1947, is a Belgian informatics engineer and computer scientist who, together with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, developed the World Wide Web.-Biography:... , sent first HTTP communication between client and server. |
1989 1990 |
| Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer... |
Analogue computing pioneer. Originator of the Memex Memex The memex is the name given by Vannevar Bush to the hypothetical proto-hypertext system he described in his 1945 The Atlantic Monthly article As We May Think... concept, which led to the development of Hypertext Hypertext Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the... . |
1930 |
| Vint Cerf Vint Cerf Vinton Gray "Vint" Cerf is an American computer scientist, who is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with American computer scientist Bob Kahn... and Bob Kahn Bob Kahn Robert Elliot Kahn is an American Internet pioneer, engineer and computer scientist, who, along with Vinton G. Cerf, invented the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol , the fundamental communication protocols at the heart of the Internet.-Career:After receiving a B.E.E... |
Designed the Transmission Control Protocol Transmission Control Protocol The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol , and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP... and Internet Protocol Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite... (TCP/IP), the primary data communication protocols of the Internet Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide... and other computer networks. |
1978 |
| Bryan Cantrill Bryan Cantrill Bryan M. Cantrill is an engineer who worked at Sun Microsystems and later at Oracle Corporation following its acquisition by Sun. He left Oracle on July 25, 2010 to become the Vice President of Engineering at Joyent.... |
Created the first implementation of dynamic tracing, DTrace DTrace DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time... , which was previously thought an impossible problem. |
2005 |
| Alonzo Church Alonzo Church Alonzo Church was an American mathematician and logician who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer science. He is best known for the lambda calculus, Church–Turing thesis, Frege–Church ontology, and the Church–Rosser theorem.-Life:Alonzo Church... |
Founded contributions to theoretical computer science, specifically for the development of the lambda calculus Lambda calculus In mathematical logic and computer science, lambda calculus, also written as λ-calculus, is a formal system for function definition, function application and recursion. The portion of lambda calculus relevant to computation is now called the untyped lambda calculus... and the discovery of the undecidability problem Undecidable problem In computability theory and computational complexity theory, an undecidable problem is a decision problem for which it is impossible to construct a single algorithm that always leads to a correct yes-or-no answer.... within it. |
1936 |
| Wesley A. Clark Wesley A. Clark Wesley Allison Clark is a computer scientist and one of the main participants, along with Charles Molnar, in the creation of the LINC laboratory computer, which was the first mini-computer and shares with a number of other computers the claim to be the inspiration for the personal computer.Clark... |
Designed LINC LINC The LINC was a 12-bit, 2048-word computer. The LINC can be considered the first minicomputer and a forerunner to the personal computer.... , the first functional computer scaled down and priced for the individual user. Put in service in 1963, many of its features are seen as prototypes of what were to be essential elements of personal computers. |
1962 |
| Edmund M. Clarke Edmund M. Clarke Edmund Melson Clarke, Jr. is a computer scientist and academic noted for developingmodel checking, a method for formally verifying hardware and software designs.... |
Developed model checking Model checking In computer science, model checking refers to the following problem:Given a model of a system, test automatically whether this model meets a given specification.... and formal verification of software and hardware together with E. Allen Emerson E. Allen Emerson Ernest Allen Emerson is a computer scientist and endowed professor at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.He won the 2007 A.M. Turing Award along with Edmund M... . |
1981 |
| Edgar F. Codd Edgar F. Codd Edgar Frank "Ted" Codd was an English computer scientist who, while working for IBM, invented the relational model for database management, the theoretical basis for relational databases... |
Proposed and formalized the relational model Relational model The relational model for database management is a database model based on first-order predicate logic, first formulated and proposed in 1969 by Edgar F... of data management, the theoretical basis of relational databases. |
1970 |
| Stephen Cook Stephen Cook Stephen Arthur Cook is a renowned American-Canadian computer scientist and mathematician who has made major contributions to the fields of complexity theory and proof complexity... |
Formalized the notion of NP-completeness, inspiring a great deal of research in computational complexity theory Computational complexity theory Computational complexity theory is a branch of the theory of computation in theoretical computer science and mathematics that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty, and relating those classes to each other... . |
1971 |
| James Cooley James Cooley Dr. James W. Cooley is an American mathematician. James William Cooley received a B.A. degree in 1949 from Manhattan College, Bronx, NY, an M.A. degree in 1951 from Columbia University, New York, NY, and a Ph.D. degree in 1961 in applied mathematics from Columbia University... |
With John W. Tukey, created the Fast Fourier Transform Cooley-Tukey FFT algorithm The Cooley–Tukey algorithm, named after J.W. Cooley and John Tukey, is the most common fast Fourier transform algorithm. It re-expresses the discrete Fourier transform of an arbitrary composite size N = N1N2 in terms of smaller DFTs of sizes N1 and N2, recursively, in order to reduce the... . |
1965 |
| Ole-Johan Dahl Ole-Johan Dahl Ole-Johan Dahl was a Norwegian computer scientist and is considered to be one of the fathers of Simula and object-oriented programming along with Kristen Nygaard.- Career :... |
With Kristen Nygaard Kristen Nygaard Kristen Nygaard was a Norwegian computer scientist, programming language pioneer and politician. He was born in Oslo and died of a heart attack in 2002.-Object-oriented programming:... , invented the proto-object oriented language SIMULA Simula Simula is a name for two programming languages, Simula I and Simula 67, developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard... . |
1962 |
| Edsger Dijkstra Edsger Dijkstra Edsger Wybe Dijkstra ; ) was a Dutch computer scientist. He received the 1972 Turing Award for fundamental contributions to developing programming languages, and was the Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin from 1984 until 2000.Shortly before his... |
Made advances in algorithms, Goto considered harmful, the semaphore (programming) Semaphore (programming) In computer science, a semaphore is a variable or abstract data type that provides a simple but useful abstraction for controlling access by multiple processes to a common resource in a parallel programming environment.... , rigor, and pedagogy. |
1968 |
| J. Presper Eckert J. Presper Eckert John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert Jr. was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly he invented the first general-purpose electronic digital computer , presented the first course in computing topics , founded the first commercial computer company , and... |
With John Mauchly John Mauchly John William Mauchly was an American physicist who, along with J. Presper Eckert, designed ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic digital computer, as well as EDVAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer made in the United States.Together they started the first computer company,... , designed and built the ENIAC ENIAC ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.... , the first modern (all electronic, Turing-complete) computer, and the UNIVAC I UNIVAC I The UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC... , the first commercially available computer. |
1943 1951 |
| E. Allen Emerson E. Allen Emerson Ernest Allen Emerson is a computer scientist and endowed professor at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.He won the 2007 A.M. Turing Award along with Edmund M... |
Developed model checking Model checking In computer science, model checking refers to the following problem:Given a model of a system, test automatically whether this model meets a given specification.... and formal verification of software and hardware together with Edmund M. Clarke Edmund M. Clarke Edmund Melson Clarke, Jr. is a computer scientist and academic noted for developingmodel checking, a method for formally verifying hardware and software designs.... . |
1981 |
| Douglas Engelbart Douglas Engelbart Douglas Carl Engelbart is an American inventor, and an early computer and internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on the challenges of human-computer interaction, resulting in the invention of the computer mouse, and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs... |
Best known for inventing the computer mouse (in a joint effort with Bill English); as a pioneer of human-computer interaction whose Augment team developed hypertext Hypertext Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the... , networked computers Network computing Network computing is a generic term in computing which refers to computers or nodes working together over a network.It may also mean:*Cloud computing*Distributed computing*Virtual Network Computing... , and precursors to GUI Gui Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally... s. |
1963 |
| Tommy Flowers Tommy Flowers Thomas "Tommy" Harold Flowers, MBE was an English engineer. During World War II, Flowers designed Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages.-Early life:... |
Designed and built the Mark 1 and the ten improved Mark 2 Colossus computer Colossus computer Not to be confused with the fictional computer of the same name in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.Colossus was the world's first electronic, digital, programmable computer. Colossus and its successors were used by British codebreakers to help read encrypted German messages during World War II... s, the world’s first programmable, digital, electronic, computing devices. |
1943 |
| Gottlob Frege Gottlob Frege Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on... |
Developed first-order predicate calculus, which was a crucial precursor requirement to developing computation theory. | 1879 |
| Seymour Ginsburg Seymour Ginsburg Seymour Ginsburg was a pioneer of automata theory, formal language theory, anddatabase theory, in particular; and computer science, in general... |
Proved "don't-care" circuit minimization does not necessarily yield optimal results, proved that the ALGOL programming language ALGOL ALGOL is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in the mid 1950s which greatly influenced many other languages and became the de facto way algorithms were described in textbooks and academic works for almost the next 30 years... is context-free (thus linking formal language theory Formal language A formal language is a set of words—that is, finite strings of letters, symbols, or tokens that are defined in the language. The set from which these letters are taken is the alphabet over which the language is defined. A formal language is often defined by means of a formal grammar... to the problem of compiler Compiler A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language... writing), and invented AFL Theory Abstract family of languages In computer science, in particular in the field of formal language theory,the term abstract family of languages refers to an abstract mathematical notion generalizing characteristics common to the regular languages, the context-free languages and the recursively enumerable languages, and other... . |
1958 1961 1967 |
| Kurt Gödel Kurt Gödel Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the... |
Proved that Peano axiomatized arithmetic could not be both logically consistent and complete in first-order predicate calculus. Church, Kleene, and Turing developed the foundations of computation theory based on corollaries to Gödel's work. | 1931 |
| Lois Haibt Lois Haibt Lois Haibt was an American Computer Scientist, is perhaps most famous for being a member of the ten person team that invented FORTRAN, the first successful high level programming language. She joined the FORTRAN team, which was led by John Backus, upon graduation from Vassar College... |
Was a member of the ten person team that invented Fortran Fortran Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing... and among the first women to play a crucial role in the development of computer science. |
1954 |
| C.A.R. Hoare | Developed the formal language Communicating Sequential Processes Communicating sequential processes In computer science, Communicating Sequential Processes is a formal language for describing patterns of interaction in concurrent systems. It is a member of the family of mathematical theories of concurrency known as process algebras, or process calculi... (CSP) and Quicksort. |
1960 1978 |
| Grace Hopper Grace Hopper Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy officer. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language... |
Pioneered work on the necessity for high-level programming languages, which she termed automatic programming, and wrote the A-O compiler Compiler A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language... , which heavily influenced the COBOL COBOL COBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments.... language. |
1952 |
| Cuthbert Hurd Cuthbert Hurd Cuthbert Corwin Hurd was an American computer scientist and entrepreneur, who was instrumental in helping the International Business Machines Corporation develop its first general-purpose computers.-Life:... |
Helped the International Business Machines Corporation develop its first general-purpose computer, the IBM 701 IBM 701 The IBM 701, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was announced to the public on April 29, 1952, and was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer... . |
1952 |
| Kenneth E. Iverson Kenneth E. Iverson Kenneth Eugene Iverson was a Canadian computer scientist noted for the development of the APL programming language in 1962. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 for his contributions to mathematical notation and programming language theory... |
Assisted in establishing the first graduate course in computer science (at Harvard Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country... ) and taught that course; invented the APL programming language APL programming language APL is an interactive array-oriented language and integrated development environment, which is available from a number of commercial and noncommercial vendors and for most computer platforms. It is based on a mathematical notation developed by Kenneth E... and made contribution to interactive computing. |
1954; 1962 |
| Jacek Karpinski Jacek Karpinski Jacek Karpiński was a Polish pioneer in computer engineering and computer science.During WW2 he was a soldier of Batalion Zośka of Polish Home Army, awarded multiple times with a Cross of Valour... |
Developed the first differential analyzer that used transistors, and developed one of the first machine learning algorithms for character and image recognition. Also was the inventor of one of the first minicomputers, the K-202 K-202 K-202 was a 16-bit minicomputer, invented by Polish scientist Jacek Karpiński between 1971-1973 in cooperation with British companies Data-Loop and M.B. Metals. Approximately 30 units were produced. The later production was halted as it was not in line with the ES EVM causing the inventor to... . |
1973 |
| Alan Kay Alan Kay Alan Curtis Kay is an American computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design, and for coining the phrase, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."He is the president of the Viewpoints Research... |
Pioneered many of the ideas at the root of object-oriented programming languages, led the team that developed Smalltalk Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist... , and made fundamental contributions to personal computing. |
1970~ |
| Stephen Cole Kleene Stephen Cole Kleene Stephen Cole Kleene was an American mathematician who helped lay the foundations for theoretical computer science... |
Pioneered work with Alonzo Church Alonzo Church Alonzo Church was an American mathematician and logician who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer science. He is best known for the lambda calculus, Church–Turing thesis, Frege–Church ontology, and the Church–Rosser theorem.-Life:Alonzo Church... on the Lambda Calculus Lambda calculus In mathematical logic and computer science, lambda calculus, also written as λ-calculus, is a formal system for function definition, function application and recursion. The portion of lambda calculus relevant to computation is now called the untyped lambda calculus... that first laid down the foundations of computation theory. |
1936 |
| Donald Knuth Donald Knuth Donald Ervin Knuth is a computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.He is the author of the seminal multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming. Knuth has been called the "father" of the analysis of algorithms... |
Wrote The Art of Computer Programming The Art of Computer Programming The Art of Computer Programming is a comprehensive monograph written by Donald Knuth that covers many kinds of programming algorithms and their analysis.... and created TeX TeX TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as .... . |
1968 1989 |
| Leslie Lamport Leslie Lamport Leslie Lamport is an American computer scientist. A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, he received a B.S. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1960, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from Brandeis University, respectively in 1963 and 1972... |
Formulated algorithms to solve many fundamental problems in distributed systems (e.g. the bakery algorithm Lamport's bakery algorithm Lamport's bakery algorithm is a computer algorithm devised by computer scientist Leslie Lamport, which is intended to improve the safety in the usage of shared resources among multiple threads by means of mutual exclusion.... ). Developed the concept of a logical clock Lamport timestamps The algorithm of Lamport timestamps is a simple algorithm used to determine the order of events in a distributed computer system. As different nodes or processes will typically not be perfectly synchronized, this algorithm is used to provide a partial ordering of events with minimal overhead, and... , enabling synchronization between distributed entities based on the events through which they communicate. |
1974 1978 |
| Sergei Alekseyevich Lebedev Sergei Alekseyevich Lebedev Sergey Alexeyevich Lebedev was a Soviet scientist in the fields of electrical engineering and computer science, and designer of the first Soviet computers.... |
Independently designed the first electronic computer in the Soviet Union, MESM, in Kiev, Ukraine. | 1951 |
| Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German .... |
Made advances in symbolic logic, such as the Calculus ratiocinator Calculus ratiocinator The Calculus Ratiocinator is a theoretical universal logical calculation framework, a concept described in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, usually paired with his more frequently mentioned characteristica universalis, a universal conceptual language.... , that were heavily influential on Gottlob Frege Gottlob Frege Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on... . Made developments in first-order predicate calculus that were crucial for the theoretical foundations of computer science. |
1670~ |
| Ramon Llull Ramon Llull Ramon Llull was a Majorcan writer and philosopher, logician and tertiary Franciscan. He wrote the first major work of Catalan literature. Recently-surfaced manuscripts show him to have anticipated by several centuries prominent work on elections theory... |
Designed multiple symbolic representations machines, and pioneered notions of symbolic representation and manipulation to produce knowledge—both of which were major influences on Leibniz. | 1300~ |
| J. C. R. Licklider J. C. R. Licklider Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider , known simply as J.C.R. or "Lick" was an American computer scientist, considered one of the most important figures in computer science and general computing history... |
Began the investigation of human-computer interaction, leading to many advances in computer interfaces as well as in cybernetics Cybernetics Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form... and artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its... . |
1960 |
| Ada Lovelace Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace , born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine... |
Began the study of scientific computation, analyzing Babbage's work in her Sketch of the Analytical Engine, and was the namesake for the Ada programming language. | 1843 |
| John Mauchly John Mauchly John William Mauchly was an American physicist who, along with J. Presper Eckert, designed ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic digital computer, as well as EDVAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer made in the United States.Together they started the first computer company,... |
With J. Presper Eckert J. Presper Eckert John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert Jr. was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly he invented the first general-purpose electronic digital computer , presented the first course in computing topics , founded the first commercial computer company , and... , designed and built the ENIAC ENIAC ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.... , the first modern (all electronic, Turing-complete) computer, and the UNIVAC I UNIVAC I The UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC... , the first commercially available computer. Also worked on BINAC BINAC BINAC, the Binary Automatic Computer, was an early electronic computer designed for Northrop Aircraft Company by the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1949. Eckert and Mauchly, though they had started the design of EDVAC at the University of Pennsylvania, chose to leave and start EMCC, the... (1949), EDVAC EDVAC EDVAC was one of the earliest electronic computers. Unlike its predecessor the ENIAC, it was binary rather than decimal, and was a stored program computer.... (1949), UNIVAC UNIVAC UNIVAC is the name of a business unit and division of the Remington Rand company formed by the 1950 purchase of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, founded four years earlier by ENIAC inventors J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and the associated line of computers which continues to this day... (1951) with Grace Hopper and Jean Bartik, to develop early "Stored program" computers. |
1943 1951 |
| John McCarthy John McCarthy (computer scientist) John McCarthy was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. He coined the term "artificial intelligence" , invented the Lisp programming language and was highly influential in the early development of AI.McCarthy also influenced other areas of computing such as time sharing systems... |
Invented LISP Lisp A lisp is a speech impediment, historically also known as sigmatism. Stereotypically, people with a lisp are unable to pronounce sibilants , and replace them with interdentals , though there are actually several kinds of lisp... , a functional programming language. |
1955 |
| Marvin Minsky Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:... |
Co-founder of Artificial Intelligence Lab MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory... at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in... , author of several texts on AI and philosophy. |
1963 |
| Max Newman Max Newman Maxwell Herman Alexander "Max" Newman, FRS was a British mathematician and codebreaker.-Pre–World War II:Max Newman was born Maxwell Neumann in Chelsea, London, England, on 7 February 1897... |
Instigated the production of the Colossus computer Colossus computer Not to be confused with the fictional computer of the same name in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.Colossus was the world's first electronic, digital, programmable computer. Colossus and its successors were used by British codebreakers to help read encrypted German messages during World War II... s at Bletchley Park Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing... . After the war he established the Computing Machine Laboratory Computing Machine Laboratory Max Newman established the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory at Manchester University, shortly after the end of World War II, around 1946. The Laboratory was funded through a grant from the Royal Society which was approved in the summer of 1946... at the University of Manchester University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group... where the world’s first Stored-program computer Stored-program computer A stored-program computer is one which stores program instructions in electronic memory. Often the definition is extended with the requirement that the treatment of programs and data in memory be interchangeable or uniform.... , the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine was invented. |
1943 |
| John von Neumann John von Neumann John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,... |
Devised the von Neumann architecture Von Neumann architecture The term Von Neumann architecture, aka the Von Neumann model, derives from a computer architecture proposal by the mathematician and early computer scientist John von Neumann and others, dated June 30, 1945, entitled First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC... upon which most modern computers are based. |
1945 |
| Kristen Nygaard Kristen Nygaard Kristen Nygaard was a Norwegian computer scientist, programming language pioneer and politician. He was born in Oslo and died of a heart attack in 2002.-Object-oriented programming:... |
With Ole-Johan Dahl Ole-Johan Dahl Ole-Johan Dahl was a Norwegian computer scientist and is considered to be one of the fathers of Simula and object-oriented programming along with Kristen Nygaard.- Career :... , invented the proto-object oriented language SIMULA Simula Simula is a name for two programming languages, Simula I and Simula 67, developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard... . |
1962 |
| Emil L. Post Emil Leon Post Emil Leon Post was a mathematician and logician. He is best known for his work in the field that eventually became known as computability theory.-Early work:... |
Developed the Post machine as a model of computation, independently of Turing. Known also for developing truth tables, the Post correspondence problem Post correspondence problem The Post correspondence problem is an undecidable decision problem that was introduced by Emil Post in 1946. Because it is simpler than the halting problem and the Entscheidungsproblem it is often used in proofs of undecidability.... used in recursion theory as well as proving what is known as Post's theorem Post's theorem In computability theory Post's theorem, named after Emil Post, describes the connection between the arithmetical hierarchy and the Turing degrees.- Background :The statement of Post's theorem uses several concepts relating to definability and recursion theory... . |
1936 |
| Gerard Salton Gerard Salton Gerard Salton , also known as Gerry Salton, was a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University. Salton was perhaps the leading computer scientist working in the field of information retrieval during his time... |
A pioneer of automatic information retrieval Information retrieval Information retrieval is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching structured storage, relational databases, and the World Wide Web... , who proposed the vector space model Vector space model Vector space model is an algebraic model for representing text documents as vectors of identifiers, such as, for example, index terms. It is used in information filtering, information retrieval, indexing and relevancy rankings... and the inverted index Inverted index In computer science, an inverted index is an index data structure storing a mapping from content, such as words or numbers, to its locations in a database file, or in a document or a set of documents... . |
1975 |
| Dennis Ritchie Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie , was an American computer scientist who "helped shape the digital era." He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the UNIX operating system... and Ken Thompson Ken Thompson Kenneth Lane Thompson , commonly referred to as ken in hacker circles, is an American pioneer of computer science... |
Pioneered the C programming language C (programming language) C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system.... and the UNIX Unix Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna... computer operating system at Bell Labs. |
1967 |
| Claude Shannon | Founded information theory Information theory Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and... and practical digital circuit design. |
1937 1948 |
| Herbert Simon Herbert Simon Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, public administration, economics,... |
A political scientist and economist who pioneered artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its... . Co-creator of the Logic Theory Machine and the General Problem Solver General Problem Solver General Problem Solver was a computer program created in 1959 by Herbert Simon, J.C. Shaw, and Allen Newell intended to work as a universal problem solver machine. Any formalized symbolic problem can be solved, in principle, by GPS. For instance: theorems proof, geometric problems and chess... programs. |
1956 1957 |
| Ivan Sutherland Ivan Sutherland Ivan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He received the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1988 for the invention of Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal... |
Author of Sketchpad Sketchpad Sketchpad was a revolutionary computer program written by Ivan Sutherland in 1963 in the course of his PhD thesis, for which he received the Turing Award in 1988. It helped change the way people interact with computers... , the ancestor of modern computer-aided drafting (CAD) programs and one of the early examples of object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,... . |
1963 |
| John W. Tukey | With James Cooley James Cooley Dr. James W. Cooley is an American mathematician. James William Cooley received a B.A. degree in 1949 from Manhattan College, Bronx, NY, an M.A. degree in 1951 from Columbia University, New York, NY, and a Ph.D. degree in 1961 in applied mathematics from Columbia University... , created the Fast Fourier Transform Cooley-Tukey FFT algorithm The Cooley–Tukey algorithm, named after J.W. Cooley and John Tukey, is the most common fast Fourier transform algorithm. It re-expresses the discrete Fourier transform of an arbitrary composite size N = N1N2 in terms of smaller DFTs of sizes N1 and N2, recursively, in order to reduce the... . |
1965 |
| Alan Turing Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a... |
Made several founding contributions to computer science, including the Turing machine Turing machine A Turing machine is a theoretical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a... computational model, and ACE design. |
1936 |
| Maurice Wilkes | Built the first practical stored program computer (EDSAC EDSAC Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator was an early British computer. The machine, having been inspired by John von Neumann's seminal First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England... ) to be completed and for being credited with the ideas of several high-level programming language constructs. |
1949 |
| Niklaus Wirth Niklaus Wirth Niklaus Emil Wirth is a Swiss computer scientist, best known for designing several programming languages, including Pascal, and for pioneering several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984 he won the Turing Award for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages.-Biography:Wirth... |
Designed the Pascal, Modula-2 Modula-2 Modula-2 is a computer programming language designed and developed between 1977 and 1980 by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich as a revision of Pascal to serve as the sole programming language for the operating system and application software for the personal workstation Lilith... and Oberon Oberon Oberon is a legendary king of the fairies.Oberon may also refer to:-People:* Merle Oberon , British actress* Oberon Zell-Ravenheart , Neopagan activist-Media and entertainment:* Oberon... programming languages. |
1970 1978 |
| Konrad Zuse Konrad Zuse Konrad Zuse was a German civil engineer and computer pioneer. His greatest achievement was the world's first functional program-controlled Turing-complete computer, the Z3, which became operational in May 1941.... |
Built the first functional tape-stored-program-controlled computer, the Z3. The Z3 was proven to be Turing-complete in 1998. | 1941 |
~ Item marks with a tilde are circa dates
External links
- Pioneers of Computing from the Virtual Museum of ComputingVirtual Museum of ComputingThe Virtual Museum of Computing is an eclectic collection of links and online resources concerning the history of computers and computer science. It includes links to other related museums, both real and virtual, around the world, as well as having its own virtual galleries of information...
- Internet pioneers