Vannevar Bush (1890–1974). American electrical engineer and technological visionary. Inventor of the differential analyzer, a mechanical analog computer.
Samuel H. Caldwell (1904–1960). American electrical engineer and codeveloper of an electromechanical version of the Bush differential analyzer.
Noam Chomsky (1928–). American linguist. Creator of formal models of language and the theory of transformational grammar.
Alonzo Church (1903–1995). American mathematician and logician. Cocreator of the concept of computability.
Joseph Clement (1779–1844). British engineer and machine and precise tool maker. Part collaborator in the development of the Difference Engine.
Leslie John Comrie (1893–1953). New Zealander astronomer. Compiler of astronomical tables using Hollerith-style tabulating machines.
Fernando J. Corbató (1926–). American physicist, computer scientist, and scientific manager. Contributor to the theory, design, and implementation of time-sharing computer systems, and team leader in the development of the Compatible Time Sharing System (CTSS) and the Multics operating system.
Kenneth C. Craik (1914–1945). British psychologist and philosopher. Speculator on the role of computationlike symbol processing in human thinking.
Jacques Curie (1856–1941). French physicist. Codiscoverer of piezoelectricity, used in the design of acoustic delay line memories.
Pierre Curie (1859–1906). French physicist and Nobel laureate. Codiscoverer of piezoelectricity, used in the design of acoustic delay line memories. Codiscoverer of the chemical elements polonium and radium.
Adriaan De Groot (1914–2006). Dutch psychologist and chess player. Conducted studies on the cognitive psychology of chess.
Jack B. Dennis (1931–). American computer scientist. Contributor to the theory and design of multiprogrammed computers and the development of the Multics operating system.
Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002). Dutch mathematician and computer scientist. Originator of the concept of structured programming, designer of the THE multiprogramming system, and proponent of an aesthetic approach to programming.
J. Presper Eckert (1919–1995). American electrical engineer and entrepreneur. Co-inventor and builder of the ENIAC electronic programmable computer, conceiver of the acoustic delay line memory, and cofounder of Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation.
Wallace J. Eckert (1902–1971). American astronomer. Applied punched-card data processing machines to astronomical calculations. Codesigner of the IBM Selectric Sequence Electrical Calculator.
Adin D. Falkoff (1921–2010). American mathematician, computer systems designer, and scientific manager. Lead author of the first formal description of a computer system, and implementer of the APL programming language.
Robert W. Floyd (1936–2001). American mathematician and computer scientist. Cocreator of a theory for proving the correctness of computer programs. Inventor of an influential grammar for programming languages.
Jay W. Forrester (1918–). American electrical engineer and systems scientist. Inventor of the ferrite magnetic core computer memory and principal designer of the Whirlwind computer.
Stanley Gill (1926–1975). British mathematician and computer scientist. Contributor to programming methodology and program development techniques.
Kurt Gödel (1906–1978). Austrian-American mathematician. Discoverer of the Incompleteness Theorem bearing his name, describing the fundamental limits of mathematical reasoning.
Adele Goldstine (1920–1964). American mathematician. Computer programmer of the ENIAC electronic programmable computer and documenter of the ENIAC project.
Herman H. Goldstine (1913–2004). American mathematician. Administered the ENIAC project, collaborated in the design of the Princeton IAS computer, and co-invented flowchart notation for specifying computer programs.
Douglas Hartree (1897–1958). British mathematician, numeric analyst, and academic administrator. Builder of a version of the Bush differential analyzer.
David Hilbert (1862–1943). German mathematician. Postulator of key open problems in mathematics and its foundations.
C. A. R. (“Tony”) Hoare (1934–). British computer scientist. Co-inventor of a logic for proving correctness of computer programs. Inventor of the Quicksort algorithm for sorting data.
Herman Hollerith (1860–1929). American inventor, statistician, and entrepreneur. Inventor of punched-card, electromechanical data processing machines.
Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992). American mathematician. Codeveloper of the Harvard-IBM Mark I electromechanical computer, cocreator of the practice of computer programming, and designer of the COBOL programming language.
Kenneth E. Iverson (1920–2004). Canadian mathematician and programming language designer. Inventor of the APL programming language and coauthor of the first formal description of a computer system.
Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752–1834). French weaver. Inventor of the Jacquard loom.
Tom Kilburn (1921–2001). British mathematician and circuit designer. Codesigner of the Manchester Mark I, the world’s second fully operational stored program computer. Co-inventor of the Williams tube, an electrostatic computer memory.
Donald E. Knuth (1938–). American mathematician, computer scientist, and textbook author. Pioneer in the art of computer programming, contributor to the design and analysis of computer algorithms, author of fundamental texts on programming and algorithms, and historian of programming and programming languages.
Thomas S. Kuhn (1922–1996). American historian and philosopher of science. Theorist of the nature of scientific practice, change, and revolutions. Conceived the concept of the scientific paradigm and paradigm shift.
Clair D. Lake (1888–1958). American engineer. Codesigner and implementer of the Harvard-IBM Mark I electromechanical computer.
Peter J. Landin (1930–2009). British mathematician and computer theorist. Developer of the theory of operational semantics for programming languages.
Dionysius Lardner (1793–1859). British science writer and expositor on the Difference Engine.
Gottfried Wilhem Liebniz (1646–1716). German mathematician and philosopher. Co-inventor of the differential calculus and inventor of a calculating machine.
Augustus Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815–1852). British mathematician. Commentator on, and composer of algorithms for, the Analytical Engine.
Percy Ludgate (1883–1922). Irish accountant. Designer of a mechanical computing machine.
John Mauchly (1903–1980). American physicist, engineer and entrepreneur. Co-inventor of the ENIAC electronic programmable computer and cofounder of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation.
John McCarthy (1927–2011). American mathematician and computer theorist. Inventor of the programming language LISP and co-inventor of artificial intelligence. Conceived the concept of time sharing in computer systems.
Warren McCulloch (1898–1968). American physician and neurophysiologist. Contributed to the early development of neurocomputing. Coconceiver of the Pitts-McCulloch neuron.
George H. Mealy (1927–2010). American computer theorist. Inventor of an abstract model of finite automata, later named after him.
Luigi Frederico Menabrea (1809–1896). Italian mathematician and politician. Expositor on the Analytical Engine.
Marvin Minsky (1927–). American mathematician and computational theorist. Co-inventor of artificial intelligence.
Edward F. Moore (1925–2003). American computational theorist. Inventor of an abstract model of finite automata, later named after him.
Oskar Morgenstern (1902–1977). German-American economist. Co-inventor of game theory.
Peter Naur (1928–). Danish astronomer and computer scientist. Codeveloper of the Algol programming language, and editor/coauthor of the Algol language definition. Co-inventor of the Backus Normal Form (or Backus Naur Form; BNF) notation for syntactic descriptions for programming languages.
Allen Newell (1927–1992). American mathematician and
computer scientist. Cocreator of heuristic programming and codesigner/co-implementer of Logic Theorist, a program to prove theorems in logic. Cocreator of artificial intelligence and the theory of heuristic problem solving.
Max Newman (1897–1984). British mathematician and scientific administrator. Team leader of the Colossus project and founder of one of the first academic computing machine laboratories.
Alan J. Perlis (1922–1970). American mathematician and computer scientist. Contributor to the design and implementation of the Algol 60 programming language.
Walter Pitts (1923–1969). American mathematical logician. Contributor to the early theory of neurocomputing. Coconceiver of the Pitts-McCulloch neuron.
George Polya (1887–1985). Hungarian-American mathematician. Explorer of heuristic reasoning in mathematics.
Karl R. Popper (1902–1994). Austrian-British philosopher of science. Conceiver of the theory of falsifiability in science.
Emil Post (1897–1954). Polish-American logician. Inventor of Post production, a formal model of computation.
Jan A. Rajchman (1911–1989). American electrical engineer. Inventor of the Selectron, an electrostatic memory device.
William Renwick (1924–1971). British computer designer. Codeveloper of the EDSAC and other Cambridge computers.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). British mathematician, logician, philosopher, and intellectual gadfly. Coauthor of Principia Mathematica, a treatise on the logical foundations of mathematics.
Heinz Rutihauser (1918–1970). Swiss mathematician and numeric analyst. Contributor to the design, development, and exposition of the Algol programming language.
Klaus Samelson (1918–1980). German mathematician, physicist, and numeric analyst. Contributor to the development of Algol 58 and Algol 60 programming languages.
Arthur Samuel (1901–1990). American electrical engineer. Designer and implementer of a heuristic, checkers-playing computer program. Contributor to the creation of artificial intelligence.
George Scheutz (1785–1873). Swedish printer and journalist. Implemented (with son Edvard [1822–1881]) the Difference Engine.
Claude E. Shannon (1916–2001). American electrical engineer. Inventor of the theory of symbolic switching circuits, cofounder of the mathematical theory of information, and artificial intelligence visionary.
Helmut Shreyer (1912–1984). German engineer, designer, and implementer of an electronic version of the Z1 mechanical computer.
Herbert Alexander Simon (1916–2001). American polymath social, cognitive, and computer scientist and philosopher of science. Nobel laureate in economics. Inventor of the theory of bounded rationality, cofounder of heuristic programming and artificial intelligence, and codesigner/implementer of the Logic Theorist computer program for proving logic theorems.
George Stibitz (1904–1995). American mathematical physicist and engineer. Designer of an early series of Bell Laboratories computers.
Leonardo Torres y Quevedo (1852–1936). Spanish engineer. Automata visionary and theorist.
Alan Mathison Turing (1912–1954). British mathematician, logician, computing theorist, and computer designer. Conceived the essential abstract mechanical notion of computability, postulated a test for machine intelligence, and designed one of the first stored-program electronic digital computers.
John von Neumann (1903–1957). Hungarian-American mathematician and scientific polymath. Co-inventor of game theory, participant in the ENIAC project, co-inventor of the stored-program computing principle, codesigner of the IAS computer, pioneer in the development of neurocomputing, and initiator of cellular automata theory.
Thomas J. Watson, Sr. (1874–1956). American corporate executive and “captain of industry.” Led the emergence of IBM as the leader in punched-card data processing machines and its entry into automatic electronic computing.
Warren Weaver (1894–1978). American mathematician and scientific administrator. Thinker on communication theory and machine translation of natural languages.
David J. Wheeler (1927–2004). British mathematician, computer programmer, and computer designer. Codeveloper of the EDSAC and other Cambridge computers. Inventor of assembly language programming and the closed subroutine concept.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947). British logician and philosopher. Coauthor of Principia Mathematica, a treatise on the logical foundations of mathematics.
Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941). American linguist. Postulator of the thesis that language shapes thought.
Norbert Wiener (1894–1964). American mathematician. Inventor of the science of cybernetics.
Maurice V. Wilkes (1913–2010). British applied mathematician. Designer of the EDSAC, the world’s first fully operational stored program electronic computer and its successor, the EDSAC II. Inventor of microprogramming. Coauthor of the first textbooks on computer programming and electronic computers. Organizer of the first British conference on computing.
Frederic C. Williams (1911–1977). British electronics engineer. Codesigner of the Manchester Mark I, the world’s second fully operational stored program computer. Co-inventor of the Williams tube, an electrostatic computer memory.
Nicklaus Wirth (1934–). Swiss computer scientist. Designer of several Algol-like programming languages.
Charles E. Wynn-Williams (1903–1979). British physicist and electronic scientific instrument designer. Inventor of the binary counter used in digital computers.
Konrad Zuse (1910–1995). German civil engineer. Designer of the Z series of mechanical and electromechanical computers, and designer of the Plankalkül programming language.
NOTE
1. The contributions attributed to the people listed in this cast of characters pertain only to the historical period ending in 1969. Many of them would continue to make other contributions, not mentioned here, to the evolution of computer science, post-1969.
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