Kenneth Harry Olsen

Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Olsen co-founded the company in 1957 with colleague Harlan Anderson and venture capital provided by Georges Doriot's American Research and Development Corporation. He was born in...

Nicholas Constantine Metropolis

Leader of the group that designed and built the MANIAC I computer in 1952 and MANIAC II in 1957, Metropolis was a Greek American physicist born in Chicago and a graduate 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...

Bradford Brooks

Leader of a team that developed a global program to test emissions from IBM products and ensure compliance with relevant requirements, Brooks has served as Corporate leader of IBM's Global Toxicology and...

David (Kitping) K. Lam

Co-inventor of a plasma-produced solid lubricant patented under the title "Fluorine Plasma Synthesis for Carbon Monofluoride," Lam is also the founder of Lam Research Corporation. He has served as Chairman of Multibeam...

Johannes Georg Bednorz

Co-discoverer, with K. Alex Müller, of high-temperature superconductivity in ceramics, Bednorz shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics for this breakthrough. He was born in Neuenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany to elementary-school teacher...

Stewart Brand

Assistant to Douglas Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos," Brand helped present many revolutionary computer technologies (including the mouse) to the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco in late 1968. In 1966, Brand...

Maxwell (Max) Herman Alexander Newman

Head of the department that built the world's first electronic stored-program digital computer, Newman was a British mathematician and codebreaker born in Chelsea, London, England. He attended Goodrich Road School, then City...

Emerson W. Pugh

Leader of IBM's development of a thin magnetic film memory array used in the top-performance IBM System/360 computer, Pugh also led research and development in magnetic bubbles and other memory technologies, and...

David Ferrucci

Leader of the team that developed IBM's Watson computer system, Ferrucci served as the principal investigator who in 2007–2011 led a team of 25 IBM and academic researchers and engineers to create...

William (Bill) David Mensch, Jr.,

A central person in the creation of the Motorola 6800 and MOS Technology 6502 families of microprocessor chips, Mensch is also recognized as the sole IC design engineer of the 6820/21 PIA,...

Clive Marles Sinclair

Developer of the first mass-market UK home computer for under £100, Sinclair was a British entrepreneur and inventor responsible for the ZX80, ZX81, and ZX Spectrum computers, as well as the slim-line...

Harry Douglas Huskey

Designer of the G15 computer for Bendix Aviation Corporation, which could perhaps be considered the first "personal" computer in the world, Huskey was an American computer design pioneer born in the Smoky...

Curt L. Cotner

Designer and developer of many key features of DB2 for z/OS, Cotner has served as an IBM Fellow and VP/CTO for IBM Data Management. In that role, he held technical and management...

Ralph Ernest Meagher

Co-creator of the ILLIAC series, culminating with the ILLIAC IV supercomputer, the largest and fastest in the world, Meagher completed his physics degree at the University of Illinois in 1949. He had...

Arnold Reitsakas

Responsible for the computer age in Estonia, Reitsakas started as a resident of Tallinn in 1952. He graduated from the 10th School of the Leningrad Institute of Communications in 1957. Reitsakas was...

Ward Christensen

Founder of the CBBS bulletin board, the first bulletin board system (BBS) ever brought online, Christensen started development during a blizzard in Chicago, Illinois, and officially established CBBS four weeks later, on...

Evangelos S. Eleftheriou

Pioneer in recording and communications techniques that established new standards of performance in hard disk drive technology, Eleftheriou has served as head of Storage Technologies at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory, Zurich, Switzerland,...

John Sanguinetti

Principal architect of VCS, the Verilog Compiled Simulator, Sanguinetti has been a major contributor to the resurgence in the use of Verilog in the design community. Born and raised in Maryland, he...

Robert (Bob) C. Baron

Program Manager for the Mariner II (Venus) and the Mariner IV (Mars) onboard space computers, Baron spent over 25 years as an engineer, entrepreneur, and executive in the computer industry. A historian,...