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...

Isaac Newton

Stating the three universal laws of motion that enabled many of the advances of the Industrial Revolution and are still the underpinnings of the non-relativistic technologies of the modern world, Newton also...

Michael Woodger

Co-author of the ALGOL 60 report, a milestone in the history of programming languages, Woodger has been a British computer scientist and Emeritus Professor at the School of Computing Science, Newcastle University,...

Federico Luigi Conte Menabrea

Author of the landmark 1842 "Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles Babbage, Esq." — translated and annotated by Ada Lovelace — which described many aspects of computer architecture and programming,...

John (Jack) Clemens

Pioneer in the development of random access disk storage, Clemens was part of the IBM team that developed the RAMAC and is sometimes considered to be among those who "built" Silicon Valley....

Gregory Bateson

A pioneer in extending systems theory and cybernetics to the social and behavioral sciences, Bateson had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe. In the 1940s he helped...

Shaun Wylie

A key member of Hut 8 at Bletchley Park, Wylie worked alongside Alan Turing on solving the Enigma machine as used by the German Navy. He was born in Oxford, England, the...

Richard Ernest Bellman

Developer of dynamic programming, Bellman made foundational contributions to mathematics and computer science by introducing a method for solving complex problems by breaking them down into simpler sub-problems. An American applied mathematician...

Leonardo Torres y Quevedo

Pioneer in remote control technology, Torres y Quevedo developed the Telekino — a robot that executed commands transmitted by electromagnetic waves — presenting it at the Paris Academy of Science in 1903. A...

Robin Oliver Gandy

A pioneer in recursion theory, Gandy is best known for the Spector-Gandy theorem, the Gandy Stage Comparison theorem, and the Gandy Selection Theorem. A British mathematician and logician, he was a friend,...

Hewitt D. Crane

Developer of an eye-movement tracking device and pen-input device for computers, Crane was an American engineer best known for his pioneering work at SRI International on ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting), for...

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege

Considered one of the founders of modern logic, Frege made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. As a philosopher, he is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for...

Pierre Jaquet-Droz

Creator of animated dolls, or automata, devices which some consider to be the oldest examples of the computer, Jaquet-Droz lived in Paris, London, and Geneva, where he designed and built these mechanisms...

Conrad (Conny) Palm

Contributor to teletraffic engineering and queueing theory, Palm also led the project that developed the first Swedish computer, the BARK. He enrolled at the School of Electrical Engineering at the Royal Institute...

John Ambrose Fleming

Inventor of the first thermionic valve or vacuum tube, Fleming transformed the foundations of modern electronics. After leaving the University of Nottingham in 1882, Fleming took up the post of "Electrician" to...

William Stanley Jevons

Constructed a logical machine called the Logic Piano, Jevons was a pioneering figure in both logic and economics. Jevons arrived quite early in his career at the doctrines that constituted his most...

Warren Weaver

Writer of the memorandum "Translation" (July 1949), said to be probably the single most influential publication in the early days of machine translation, Weaver was an American scientist, mathematician, and science administrator...

Morton M. Astrahan

Developer of the SAGE air-defense computer and a pioneer in relational database systems, Astrahan joined IBM in 1949 and spent his entire professional career there—first at the Endicott Laboratory and then later...

Martin (Marty) Cooper

Lead inventor of the "radio telephone system" and father of the cell phone, Cooper is a pioneer and visionary in the wireless communications industry. With eleven patents in the field, he is...

Michael James Lighthill

Pioneer in aeroacoustics and developer of television and communications satellites, Lighthill was a British applied mathematician known for his pioneering work in fluid dynamics. He worked at the National Physical Laboratory, Trinity...