William (Bill) Millard

Considered the "father" of modern computer retailing, Millard founded IMS Associates, makers of the IMSAI series of computers, and the electronics retailer ComputerLand. Millard worked for IBM and, later, as the head...

Charles Sanders Peirce

As early as 1886, Peirce saw that logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits, the same idea that was used decades later to produce digital computers. An American philosopher,...

Jeffrey (Jeff) Scott Raikes

Senior executive at Microsoft and CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Raikes is credited with driving much of Microsoft's early work in business applications. He joined Microsoft in 1981 as...

Ben Silbermann

Co-founder and CEO of Pinterest, a virtual pinboard that grew faster than Facebook and Twitter, Silbermann launched the platform in early 2010 alongside Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp. Pinterest is a free...

Ghavam Shahidi

Chief architect of silicon on insulator (SOI) complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology at IBM, Shahidi is an Iranian-American electrical engineer and IBM Fellow. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees, all in...

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...

David Nahamoo

Developer of algorithms that contributed to IBM's leadership in automatic speech recognition, Nahamoo's work includes contributions that resulted in the company's highly successful deployment of ViaVoice. He has served as the Speech...

Charles Walton

The first patent holder for the RFID (radio frequency identification) device, Walton was an American inventor best known for a technology that uses radio waves to transfer data from an electronic tag,...

Martin M. Wattenberg

Co-creator of IBM's Many Eyes, a ground-breaking public visualization platform and experiment in open, public data visualization and analysis, Wattenberg is an American scientist and artist known for his work with data...

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...

Toru Takahashi

Writer of the first Japanese book on the Internet, Takahashi is sometimes known as the "Mother of the Internet" in Japan. He was instrumental in bringing the Internet to Japan and promoting...

Donald F. Ferguson

Chief Architect for IBM's Software Group, Ferguson provided overall technical leadership for IBM WebSphere, Tivoli Software, IBM DB2, Rational Software, and Lotus Software products. He has served as Vice President and CTO...

Hemantha Kumar Wickramasinghe

Leader of the team that developed atomic force microscopes (AFMs) into fully hardened instruments usable both within IBM and beyond, Wickramasinghe is a distinguished pioneer in the invention and practical uses of...

Oliver Selfridge

An innovator in early computer science and artificial intelligence, Selfridge helped shape the foundations of machine learning and AI. Credited with coining the term "intelligent agents" for software programs capable of observing and...

Evan Williams

Co-founder of Twitter, Williams also founded several other Internet companies, including Pyra Labs (creator of weblog-authoring software Blogger), and has served as CEO of Twitter.

David A. Forsyth

Inventor of important methods for recognizing objects and activities in images and video, Forsyth is a South African computer scientist and full Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His early...

Robert C. Pike

A member of the Unix team at Bell Labs, Pike was involved in the creation of the Plan 9 from Bell Labs and Inferno operating systems, as well as the Limbo programming...

Paul A. Strassmann

Developer of new methods for evaluating the productivity of computer investments, Strassmann is a Czechoslovakian-born American engineer and business management theorist. He is also noted for his 47-minute 2005 lecture, "Information Management...

James (Jim) M. Williams

Helped to found and expand Linear Technology, Williams was a talented analog circuit designer and technical author. He worked for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1968–1979), Philbrick, National Semiconductor (1979–1982), and Linear...

Leslie Berlin

Author and noted IT historian, Berlin has served as Project Historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University. She wrote *The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of...