Nestor Burtnyk

Father of the multimillion-dollar computer animation industry, Burtnyk pioneered animation technology that transformed the field. Born in Ethelbert, Manitoba to Ukrainian immigrants, he began Canada's first major computer graphics research project in...

Balakrishnan Prabhakaran

Known for his work in 3D video, animations, and deformable 3D models — a form of multimedia data widely used in entertainment and medical fields — Prabhakaran has served as a Professor...

William Bill English

A key contributor to the development of the computer mouse, English worked alongside Douglas Engelbart at SRI International's Augmentation Research Center. He served in the US Navy until the late 1950s, including...

Biz Stone

Co-founder of Twitter, Stone also served as its Creative Director and helped to create and launch Xanga, Blogger, Odeo, and Obvious. Stone published two books about blogging, including *Blogging: Genius Strategies for...

John Adam Presper Eckert, Jr.

Co-inventor of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, Eckert was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly, he presented the first course in computing topics (the Moore School...

Gideon Gartner

Founder of Gartner Group (now Gartner, Inc.), Gartner built one of the most influential IT research and advisory firms in the world. IT "advisory" firms are distinct from consultancies, in that they provide...

Philip Stuart Milner-Barry

One of four leading codebreakers at Bletchley Park to petition Prime Minister Winston Churchill directly for more resources for their work, Milner-Barry was also a British chess player, chess writer, and civil...

Dorothy Vaughan

The first African American woman to receive a promotion and supervise a group of staff at Langley Research Center, Vaughan became acting supervisor of the West Area Computers in 1949 and was...

Elaine J. Weyuker

Leading researcher on rigorous software testing, including industrial evaluations of the comparative effectiveness and costs of such testing methods, Weyuker is an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow (since 2003), and an AT&T...

John Aris

Part of the original team that built the LEO computer, Aris later served as Director of the National Computing Centre (NCC) 1985–90, where he championed the importance and the skills of computer...

Jon Casey

A strategic and tactical innovator in semiconductor packaging and chip package interaction technologies, Casey became an IBM Fellow in 2013. He contributed to IBM's development of the industry's highest performing organic packaging...

Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen

Famous for constructing The Turk, a chess-playing automaton later revealed to be a hoax, Kempelen was also a Hungarian author and inventor with Irish ancestors, born in Pressburg, Kingdom of Hungary, Habsburg...

Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum

Author of MINIX, a clone of UNIX for the IBM PC, Tanenbaum wrote the operating system in 1987 to help students and others learn how an operating system worked. In the early 1990s,...

William Harvey Inmon

Recognized by many as the father of the data warehouse, Inmon wrote the first book, held the first conference (with Arnie Barnett), wrote the first column in a magazine, and was the...

Jeffrey Chuan Chu

A core member of the engineering team that designed the first electronic computer, ENIAC, in 1946, Chu went on to become a leading figure in computing and a tireless advocate for modernizing...

John LeRoy Hennessy

Co-founder of MIPS Computer Systems Inc., Hennessy is known for developing the MIPS architecture and pioneering RISC chips. He has also served as the 10th President of Stanford University. He earned his...

John Sanguinetti

Principal architect of VCS, the Verilog Compiled Simulator, Sanguinetti has been a major contributor to the resurgence in the use of Verilog in the design community. Born and raised in Maryland, he...

Garth Gibson

Co-developer of the RAID taxonomy of redundant data storage systems, Gibson is a Computer Scientist from Carnegie Mellon University, born in Aurora, Ontario. He holds a Ph.D. and an MSc in Computer...

Chandu Thota

A widely recognized expert in mapping, geo-spatial applications, and scalable web services, Thota is a software entrepreneur notable for starting a service called Dealmap, which launched DealExchange to help publishers and local...

Patrick Volkerding

Founder and maintainer of the Slackware Linux distribution, Volkerding has served as Slackware's "Benevolent Dictator for Life" (BDFL), and is also known informally as "The Man". He has also contributed to the...