CSC-SY

Formal name:

Alan Kay

Date of birth:

Unknown date of birth
Springfield, Massachusetts, USA

Contributions:

1. Help create the idea of a laptop computer with his Dynabook prototype while at Xerox PARC.
2. Helped develop the GUI while at Xerox PARC.
3. Helped develop Smalltalk while at Xerox PARC.
4. Helped develop Ethernet, Laser Printing, and the Client-Server network model.

Company:

Disney

Quotes:

• "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

Formal name:

Alan Mathison Turing

Date of birth:

June 23, 1912
Paddington, London

Date of death:

June 7, 1954
Wilmslow, Cheshire

Contributions:

1. Credited as the founder of computer science.
2. Developed the Turing Machine in 1936.
3. Developed the Turing Test.

Web page:

http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/index.html

Formal name:

William H. Gates

Date of birth:

October 8, 1955
Seattle, Washington, USA

Contributions:

1. Developed BASIC for the MITS Altair.
2. Helped in the development of Microsoft's earlier programs such as MS-DOS.
3. Founder of the Microsoft company.

Company:

Microsoft

Quotes:

• "640K ought to be enough for anybody."
• "Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."

Books:

Business @ the Speed of Thought

Web page:

http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/default.asp

Date of birth:

December 26, 1791
London

Date of death:

October 18, 1871
London

Contributions:

1. Invented and developed the Difference Engine in 1821.

Books:

• A Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives
• Ninth Bridgewater Treatise
• On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
• Passages from the Life of a Philosopher
• Reflections on the Decline of Science in England
• Table of Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108,000

Web Page:

http://www.cbi.umn.edu/exhibits/cb.html

Other:

Sometimes referred to as the father of computing.

Formal name:

Daniel Bricklin

Date of birth:

1951
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Contributions:

1. Created VisiCalc.
2. Helped develop the first word processing system.

Company:

Interland

Web Page:

http://www.bricklin.com/

Formal name:

David Bradley

Date of birth:

Unknown

Contributions:

1. IBM engineer who helped create the IBM PC and also wrote the code for the now famous three finger salute (Ctrl + Alt + Delete) key sequence that is still in use today.

Company:

IBM

Formal name:

David Morse

Date of birth:

Unknown

Contributions:

1. Co-founded Amiga with David Morse.

Company:

Amiga

Date of birth:

1925
Portland, Oregon, USA

Contributions:

1. Invented the computer mouse.
2. Helped with the development of a GUI while at Xerox PARC.

Formal name:

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

Date of birth:

May 11, 1930
Rotterdam

Date of death:

August 6, 2002
Nuenen, the Netherlands

Contributions:

1. Helped with the development of ALGOL.
2. Developed the Shortest Path Algorithm.

Quotes:

• "GOTO statement considered harmful"

Web page:

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/

Other:

• Recipient of the 1972 ACM Turning Award.

Date of birth:

1923
Vienna

Date of death:

November 20, 2003

Contributions:

• Helped start Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957.

Date of birth:

Unknown date of birth

Contributions:

1. Wrote the first computer virus in 1983 and later coined the term in his 1984 paper.

Web page:

http://all.net

Other:

• Awarded the prestigious international Information Technology Award in 1989.

Formal name:

Grace Murray Hopper

Date of birth:

December 9, 1906
New York City, USA

Date of death:

January 1, 1992

Contributions:

1. Erroneously credited as coining the term: "bug".
2. Extended the meaning of debug.

Quotes:

• "Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise."

Other:

• Awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1991.
• The first woman to return to active duty after the United States Navy was unable to develop a working payroll plan after 823 attempts. Grace Hopper was recalled from retirement in order to help standardize the high-level Naval computer languages.

Formal name:

Gordon E. Moore

Date of birth:

January 3, 1929
San Francisco, California, USA

Contributions:

1. Helped start Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957.
2. Co-founded Intel with Robert Noyce in 1968.
3. Made an observation in 1965, that later became widely known as Moore's Law.

Other:

Eugene Kleiner, Gordon Moore, Jerry Sanders, Robert Noyce

Formal name:

Hugh Gene Loebner

Date of birth:

Unknown

Contributions:

1. Sponsor of The Loebner Price for Artificial Intelligence ("The first Turing Test" ).

Company:

Crown Industries, Inc.

Web pages:

http://www.loebner.net/
http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html

Formal name:

Jack St. Clair Kilby

Date of birth:

November 8, 1923
Jefferson City, Missouri, USA

Contributions:

1. Conceived and built the first electronic circuit.
2. Developed and demonstrated a microchip on September 12, 1958.
3. Co-invented the hand-held calculator and thermal printer.

Company:

Texas Instruments

Other:

• Awarded the National Medal of Science in 1970.
• Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1982.
• Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000.

Date of birth:

Unknown date of birth.

Contributions:

1. Developed IRC in August 1988.

Formal name:

Jay Glenn Miner

Date of birth:

May 31, 1932
Prescott, Arizona, USA

Date of death:

June 20, 1994
Mountain View, California, USA

Contributions:

1. Co-founded Amiga with David Morse.

Company:

Amiga

Date of birth:

Unknown date of birth.

Contributions:

1. Help establish AMD May 1, 1969

Company:

AMD

Formal name:

Lawrence Page

Date of birth:

Date of birth unknown
East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Contributions:

1. Helped first develop Google in 1996.
2. Founded Google with Larry Page in 1998.

Company:

Google

Date of birth:

1954
Los Angeles, California, USA

Contributions:

1. Developed Perl.

Books:

Author of Numerous Perl books.

Web page:

http://www.wall.org/~larry/

Date of birth:

December 28, 1969
Helsinki, Finland

Contributions:

1. Developed Linux.

Books:

• Open Sources: Voices from the open Source revolution
• Linux Kernel Internals
• The Hacker Ethic: A Radical Approach to the Philosophy of Business
• Just a little fun

Formal name:

Paul G. Allen

Date of birth:

January 21, 1953
Seattle, Washington, USA

Contributions:

1. Co-founder of Microsoft. Left Microsoft in 1983.
2. Helped in the development of early Microsoft products such as MS-DOS.
3. Original owner of TechTV.

Company:

Vulcan

Web page:

http://www.paulallen.com

Date of birth:

1946
Brooklyn, New York, USA

Contributions:

1. Development of Ethernet while at Xerox PARC..
2. Founded 3COM in 1979.
3. Coined Metcalfe's Law.

Company:

3COM

Quotes:

• "Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the Internet's continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse."

Formal name:

Robert Norton Noyce

Date of birth:

December 12, 1927
Burlington, Iowa, USA

Date of death:

June 3, 1990
Austin, Texas, USA

Contributions:

1. Helped start Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957.
2. Invented the Integrated chip while at Fairchild Semiconductor 1959.
3. Co-founded Intel with Gordon Moore in 1968.

Company:

Intel

Other:

• Awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1987.

Date of birth:

Date of birth unknown
Moscow, Russia

Contributions:

1. Helped first develop Google in 1996.
2. Founded Google with Larry Page in 1998.

Company:

Google

Web Page:

http://www-db.stanford.edu/~sergey/

Date of birth:

1925
Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, USA

Date of death:

October 5, 1996
Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA

Contributions:

1. Helped develop the CDC 7600 in 1969. Considered by most to be the worlds first supercomputer.
2. Founded Cray Research Inc. in 1972.

Company:

Cray

Formal name:

Steve Paul Jobs

Date of birth:

February 24, 1955
Los Altos, California, USA

Contributions:

1. Co-founded Apple in 1976.
2. Co-founded Pixar in 1986.

Company:

Apple
Pixar

Web page:

http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/jobs.html

Formal name:

Steven Wozniak

Date of birth:

August 11, 1950
Sunnyvale, California, USA

Contributions:

1. Co-founded Apple in 1976.

Company:

Wheels of Zeus (wOz)

Web page:

http://www.woz.org/wozscape/wozbio.html

Other:

• Awarded the National Medal of Technology by the President of the United States in 1985.
• Inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2000.