Terry G. Johnson

Founder of Miniscribe in 1980, an early manufacturer of 5.25-inch and later 3.5-inch drives, Johnson was a pioneer in disk storage products. Born in Ogden, Utah, Johnson graduated from high school in 1953....

Konrad Zuse

German engineer who, completely independently of British and American computing efforts, built the Z3 (1941), the first working program-controlled general-purpose digital computer. The Z3, destroyed in the bombing of Berlin, never got...

Rolf William Landauer

A significant contributor in diverse areas of the thermodynamics of information processing, condensed matter physics, and the conductivity of disordered media, Landauer was a German-American physicist who made important contributions across these...

Charles (Garry) Garrett Betty

Instrumental in the success of the original IBM Personal Computer, Betty received the IBM President's Award in 1982 for his work on the original IBM PC. From 1996 until his death in...

Charles Edwin Molnar

Co-developer of one of the first minicomputers, the LINC (Laboratory Instrument Computer), Molnar made this contribution with Wesley A. Clark while a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in...

B. (Bob) Ramakrishna Rau

Developer of the Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) technology that is now standard in modern computer processors, Rau was widely recognized as an expert in VLIW computing, which is the basis of...

Victor (Vic) Hayes

Known as the "Father of Wi-Fi," Hayes co-established and chaired the IEEE 802.11 Standards Working Group for Wireless Local Area Networks. Born in Surabaya, Dutch East Indies, he held a BSEE and...

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,...

Charles Ingerham Peddle

Main designer of the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, the KIM-1 SBC, and the Commodore PET personal computer, Peddle was an American electrical engineer. Born in Bangor, Maine, he worked in a radio...

Federico Faggin

Co-designer of the world's first microprocessor, Faggin is recognized as a foundational figure in modern computing. After obtaining his university degree, he worked at SGS Fairchild in Italy, where he developed SGS's...

Boris Artashesovich Babayan

Creator of early Soviet supercomputers, Babayan is notable as a pioneering figure in Soviet computing history. Babayan later pursued a career with Intel.

Heinz Zemanek

Austrian computer pioneer who built the first European all-transistor computer in 1955, Zemanek went on to found the IBM Laboratory Vienna in 1961. The IBM Laboratory Vienna (later known colloquially as the Vienna...

Samuel Hawks Caldwell

Best known for his contributions to early computers, Caldwell was an American electrical engineer who completed his degrees in electrical engineering at MIT. His M.Sc. thesis was entitled Electrical Characteristics and Theory...

Mamoru Hosaka

A pioneer of seminal computer research and development in Japan, Hosaka was born in 1920 and graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1942, majoring in aeronautical engineering. After 1946, he belonged...

Robert B. Garner

Team member for the Xerox STAR 8010 Professional Workstation, including the first 10-mbps Ethernet NIC in 1981, Garner designed and managed compute, network, and storage systems in Silicon Valley in both product...

Heinrich Rohrer

Co-designer of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), Rohrer shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for this invention; the other half of the Prize was awarded to...

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...

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...

Heinz Nixdorf

German computer entrepreneur, Nixdorf founded and led Nixdorf Computer AG. He developed and marketed low-end commercial computers mainly within Europe between 1965 and 1985. He had production facilities in Germany, Ireland, Spain,...

Steven W. Hunter

Systems Architect for Systems x and BladeCenter products at IBM, Hunter was named an IBM Fellow in 2011—the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve. He has served...