Ida Rhodes

A member of the influential circle of women at the heart of early computer development in the United States, Rhodes was an American mathematician who shaped the field during its foundational years.

Sam Harrell

Co-founder of SEMATECH, the partnership between the U.S. government and U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturers to regain competitiveness for the U.S. semiconductor industry, Harrell is a leading specialist in semiconductor and international trade and...

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...

Jef Raskin

Human-computer interface expert best known for starting the Macintosh project for Apple, Raskin first met Apple Computer's Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak following the debut of their Apple II personal computer at...

George H. Conrades

Establisher of IBM's Asia/Pacific headquarters in Tokyo, Japan — enabling the region to attain record growth in revenues and earnings — Conrades is an Internet technology pioneer and executive who spent 31...

Christopher (Chris) J. Date

Involved in the technical planning and design of the IBM products SQL/DS and DB2, Date is an independent author, lecturer, researcher, and consultant specializing in relational database theory. He attended High Wycombe...

Ian Munro Ross

Co-inventor of epitaxy, used in silicon-based manufacturing processes for BJTs and modern CMOS and particularly important for compound semiconductors such as gallium arsenide, Ross was also an early pioneer in transistors who...

Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope

Inventor of two calculating machines, Stanhope was also a British statesman and scientist and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). Also known as Charles Mahon, 3rd Earl Stanhope, he was the...

Venu Govindaraju

Co-developer of handwriting recognition at the core of the first handwritten address interpretation system used by the US Postal Service, Govindaraju is an Indian-American computer scientist and educator whose primary contributions are...

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...

Larry Wall

Creator of Perl, Wall is one of the most influential figures in the open-source software movement. Wall studied linguistics and music at Seattle Pacific University, where he graduated in 1976. He later attended...

Marc Andreessen

Founder of Netscape and co-author of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, Andreessen is an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He also chaired Opsware, a software company he originally founded as...

John A Gosden

Pioneer of LEO software development and EDP standards, Gosden was a key figure in the world's first business computing applications. John joined J. Lyons as a trainee programmer in 1953 just a few...

Laszlo (Les) A. Belady

Author of the most-cited paper in software over two decades, Belady's 1966 article on Virtual Memory Systems set a landmark acknowledged by the Citation Index Classic. A design engineer and veteran senior...

Jay W. Lathrop

Instrumental in the development of photolithography — critical in the first efforts to produce semiconductor integrated circuits — Lathrop is recognized as a pioneering figure in microminiaturization of solid-state circuits. Born in Bangor,...

Ethel Cox Marden

Participant in the creation of the first computer languages, Marden went to work for the National Bureau of Standards after World War II, serving as a mathematician and administrator. She served as...

Marcel Joseph Vogel

Inventor of the magnetic coating for the IBM 24" hard disk drive systems still in use, Vogel worked as a research scientist at the IBM San Jose Research Center for 27 years....

Kevin Mitnick

One of the most controversial and most-wanted computer hackers in United States history, Mitnick was convicted of various computer- and communications-related crimes in the late 20th century. Following his release, Mitnick went on...

Robert Jay Creasy

Project leader of the first full virtualization hypervisor, the IBM CP-40, Creasy later saw his work develop into IBM's highly successful line of mainframe VM operating systems — a family of IBM...

Edward Hance Shortliffe

Pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence in medicine, Shortliffe is best known as the principal developer of the clinical expert system MYCIN, one of the first rule-based artificial intelligence expert systems,...