John Maurice McClean Pinkerton

Co-designer of England's first business computer, the LEO computer, Pinkerton was a pioneering British computer designer who worked alongside David Caminer to produce the machine for J. Lyons and Co in 1951....

Jakob Nielsen

Founder of the "discount usability engineering" movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces, Nielsen invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation — a usability inspection method for computer software that...

Karl Ganzhorn

Director of IBM development in Europe, Ganzhorn founded and led the German laboratory of IBM at Böblingen. He initiated major development efforts in semiconductor memories, computer systems, and software. Ganzhorn has served as...

Luke Nosek

Co-founder of PayPal and creator of the company's "instant transfer" product, Nosek is a Polish-born American entrepreneur. He received a B.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign....

George Bernard Dantzig

Known for developing the simplex algorithm for solving linear programming problems, Dantzig was a major contributor in operations research, computer science, and statistics. He also worked with linear programming, some years after...

Marissa Ann Mayer

CEO of Yahoo and early Google executive, Mayer served as Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google, acting as a gatekeeper for their product release process, determining when or...

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...

Kesav Vithal Nori

One of the creators of the Pascal P4 compiler, Nori is well-known for this work done together with Nikolaus Wirth. He has served as Executive Director and Executive Vice President of Tata...

Kevin OLeary

Co-developer of SoftKey International, a software publisher of software intended for home audiences, OLeary built the company from a $10,000 seed investment from his mother into a successful CD-ROM distributor. Born in Mount...

Jeffrey (Jeff) M. Nick

Major role player in setting technical direction for EMC Corporation's M&A activities in the areas of Cloud computing, software-defined data center, and data analytics, Nick has served as Senior Vice President and...

Anita Borg

Developer of a patented method for generating complete address traces for analyzing and designing high-speed memory systems, and of MECCA, an email and Web-based system for communicating in virtual communities, Borg was...

Leslie Lamport

Known for his seminal work in distributed systems and as the initial developer of LaTeX, Lamport is a prominent computer scientist and mathematician. A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, he...

John D. Carmack

Co-founder and leading programmer of id Software and lead engineer of Armadillo Aerospace, Carmack is a pioneering figure in computer graphics and game development. Softdisk, a computer company in Shreveport, Louisiana, hired...

Robert E. Cook

Founder of VM Software (later renamed Systems Center), a provider of software utilities for IBM's VM operating system, Cook built his first company into a firm listed on both the Nasdaq and...

Don Hammond

Developer of time standards for space navigation, high-speed computer printers, and medical ultrasound technology, Hammond built a 50-year career on these and other significant contributions. While at HP from 1959 to 1987, Hammond...

Harm Peter Hofstee

Chief architect of the synergistic processor elements in the Cell Broadband Engine, Hofstee is known for his work on the processor behind the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Roadrunner supercomputer that first...

Mary Lee Woods (aka Berners-Lee)

Member of the team that developed programs for the Manchester University Mark 1, Ferranti Mark 1 and Mark 1 Star computers, Woods was a British mathematician and computer programmer who was married...

Jennifer Granholm

The first woman to serve as both Attorney General and Governor of Michigan, Granholm held those offices from 1999 to 2003 and 2003 to 2011, respectively, and later served as the 16th...

John (Jack) Sebastian Frey

Contributor to IBM's successful defense against antitrust actions in the United States and Europe, Frey built a distinguished 32-year legal career with the company. Born in Hornell, NY, he grew up in Corning,...

Gary Mokotoff

Pioneer of the computer software industry for the IBM 1401, Mokotoff is the co-creator of the 1401 Autocoder and sole author of SPS1 and SPS2. He joined IBM in 1959. From 1959 to...