# List of pioneers in computer science

This is a list of people who made transformative breakthroughs in the creation, development and imagining of what computers could do.

## Pioneers

| Achievement date | Person | Achievement |
| 1977 | Adleman, Leonard | RSA algorithm and making public-key cryptography useful in practice. |
| 1944 | Aiken, Howard | Conceived and co-designed the Harvard Mark I. |
| 830~ | Al-Khwarizmi | The term algorithm is derived from the algorism, the technique of performing arithmetic with Hindu–Arabic numerals popularised by al-Khwarizmi in his book On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals. |
| 1970, 1989 | Allen, Frances E. | Developed bit vector notation and program control-flow graphs; first female IBM Fellow (1989); first female recipient of the ACM's Turing Award (2006). |
| 1954, 1964, 1967 | Amdahl, Gene | Pioneer of mainframe computing; designed IBM 704; chief architect of IBM System/360. Formulated Amdahl's law; also worked on IBM 709 and IBM 7030 Stretch. |
| 1939 | Atanasoff, John | Built the first electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, though it was neither programmable nor Turing-complete. |
| 1822, 1837 | Babbage, Charles | Originated the concept of a programmable general-purpose computer; designed the Analytical Engine and built a prototype for a less powerful mechanical calculator. |
| 1973 | Bachman, Charles | Outstanding contributions to database technology. |
| 1954, 1963 | Backus, John | Led the team that created FORTRAN (Formula Translation), the first practical high-level programming language, and formulated the Backus–Naur form that described the formal language syntax. |
| 850~ | Banū Mūsā | Three brothers who wrote the Book of Ingenious Devices, describing what appears to be the first programmable machine, an automatic flute player. |
| 1960–1964 | Baran, Paul | One of two independent inventors of the concept of digital packet switching used in modern computer networking including the Internet. Published a series of briefings and papers about dividing information into "message blocks" and sending them over distributed networks (1960–1964). |
| 1874 | Baudot, Émile | French telegraphic engineer; patented the Baudot code, the first means of digital communication. The modem speed unit baud is named after him. |
| 1960s | Bauer, Friedrich L. | Proposed the stack for expression evaluation, with Edsger W. Dijkstra. Influential in establishing computer science as an independent discipline of science; coined the term software engineering. Contributed to numerical analysis, fundamentals of interpretation and translation of programming languages, systematics of program development, program transformation, and cryptology. |
| 1953 | Bellman, Richard E. | American applied mathematician who introduced dynamic programming (1953) |
| 2018 | Bengio, Yoshua; Hinton, Geoffrey; Lecun, Yann | Conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing |
| 1989, 1990 | Berners-Lee, Tim | Invented the World Wide Web and sent the first HTTP communication between client and server. |
| 1995 | Blum, Manuel | Contributions to the foundations of computational complexity theory and its application to cryptography and program checking |
| 1966 | Böhm, Corrado | Theorized of the concept of structured programming. |
| 1847, 1854 | Boole, George | Formalized Boolean algebra, the basis for digital logic and computer science. |
| 1947 | Booth, Kathleen | Invented the first assembly language. |
| 1969, 1978 | Brinch Hansen, Per | Developed the RC 4000 multiprogramming system, which introduced the concept of an operating system kernel and the separation of policy and mechanism; effectively the first microkernel architecture. Co-developed the monitor with Tony Hoare, and created the first monitor implementation. Implemented the first form of remote procedure call in the RC 4000, and was first to propose remote procedure calls as a structuring concept for distributed computing. |
| 1959, 1995 | Brooks, Fred | Manager of IBM System/360 and OS/360 projects; author of The Mythical Man-Month. |
| 1908 | Brouwer, Luitzen Egbertus Jan | Founded intuitionistic logic, which later came to prevalent use in proof assistants. |
| 1954 | Burks, Arthur | Proposed Reverse Polish Notation with Don Warren and Jesse Wright in 1954, unaware of Konrad Zuse's earlier use of postfix notation in his Z3 in 1941, and later independently reinvented by Friedrich L. Bauer and Edsger W. Dijkstra for use with stacks. |
| 1930 | Bush, Vannevar | Analogue computing pioneer; originator of the Memex concept, which led to the development of Hypertext |
| 1951 | Caminer, David | With John Pinkerton, developed the LEO computer, the first business computer, for J. Lyons and Co |
| 1974 | Catmull, Edwin | Computer generated imagery (CGI) and 3D graphics pioneer who developed texture mapping, the Catmull-Clark subdivision surface algorithm (with Jim Clark), and the Catmull-Rom spline (with Raphael Rom. Former vice president of Industrial Light & Magic and co-founder of and former president of Pixar |
| 1978 | Cerf, Vint | With Bob Kahn, designed the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), the primary data communication protocols of the Internet and other computer networks |
| 1956 | Chomsky, Noam | Made contributions to computer science with his work in linguistics. Developed Chomsky hierarchy, directly impacting programming language theory and other branches of computer science. |
| 1936 | Church, Alonzo | Made fundamental contributions to theoretical computer science, specifically in the development of computability theory in the form of lambda calculus. Independently of Alan Turing, formulated what is now known as the Church-Turing Thesis and proved that first-order logic is undecidable. |
| 1962 | Clark, Wesley A. | Designed LINC, the first functional computer scaled down and priced for individual users (1963). Many of its features are considered prototypes of essential elements of personal computers. |
| 1981 | Clarke, Edmund M. | Developed model checking and formal verification of software and hardware, with E. Allen Emerson. |
| 1987 | Cocke, John | Significant contributions to compiler design and theory, the architecture of large systems, and the development of reduced instruction set computers (RISC) |
| 1970 | Codd, Edgar F. | Proposed and formalized the relational model of data management, the theoretical basis of relational databases |
| 1971 | Conway, Lynn | Superscalar architecture with multiple-issue out-of-order dynamic instruction scheduling |
| 1967 | Cook, Stephen | Formalized the notion of NP-completeness, inspiring a great deal of research in computational complexity theory |
| 1965 | Cooley, James | With John W. Tukey, created the fast Fourier transform |
| 1944 | Coombs, Allen | Designed and built the Mark II Colossus computers; superseded the Mark I version (which was the world's first digital, electronic computing device) |
| 1989 | Corbató, Fernando J. | Pioneering work organizing the concepts and leading the development of the general-purpose, large-scale, time-sharing and resource-sharing computer systems CTSS and Multics |
| 1964–1996 | Cray, Seymour | Designed a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades; and founded Cray Research, which built many of them; credited with creating the supercomputer industry |
| 1978, 1993 | Cutler, David N. | Major pioneer of operating-system design through his work at Digital Equipment Corporation and Microsoft, where he was lead engineer of the VMS and Windows NT kernels (respectively) |
| 1962 | Dahl, Ole-Johan | With Kristen Nygaard, invented the proto-object oriented language SIMULA |
| 1965 | Davies, Donald | One of two independent inventors of the concept of digital packet switching used in modern computer networking including the Internet. Conceived of and named the concept for data communication networks (1965–66). Many of the wide-area packet-switched networks of the 1970s, including ARPANET, were similar "in nearly all respects" to his original 1965 design. |
| 1976 | Diffie, Whitfield | Fundamental contributions to modern cryptography. Diffie and Hellman's groundbreaking 1976 paper "New Directions in Cryptography" introduced the ideas of public-key cryptography and digital signatures, the foundation of security protocols used on the Internet today. |
| 1968 | Dijkstra, Edsger W. | Pioneered the shortest path algorithm; coined the term structured programming; invented the semaphore; famously suggested that the GOTO statement should be considered harmful |
| 1918 | Eccles, William and Jordan, Frank Wilfred | Patented the Eccles–Jordan trigger circuit, the so-called "bistable flip-flop", a building block of all digital memory cells. Built from vacuum tubes, their concept was essential for the success of the Colossus codebreaking computer. |
| 1943, 1951 | Eckert, J. Presper | With John Mauchly, designed and built ENIAC, the first modern (all electronic, Turing-complete) computer; and UNIVAC I, the first commercially available computer |
| 1981 | Emerson, E. Allen | Developed model checking and formal verification of software and hardware, with Edmund M. Clarke |
| 1963 | Engelbart, Douglas | Best known for inventing the computer mouse, with Bill English; pioneer of human–computer interaction whose Augment team developed hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs |
| 1971 | Faggin, Federico | Designed the first commercial microprocessor, Intel 4004 |
| 1994 | Feigenbaum, Edward | Pioneering the design and construction of large-scale artificial intelligence systems, demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of artificial intelligence technology |
| 1974 | Feinler, Elizabeth | Led team that defined a simple text file format for Internet host names, which became the Domain Name System; her group became the naming authority for the top-level domains of .mil, .gov, .edu, .org, and .com |
| 1943 | Flowers, Tommy | Designed and built the Mark I Colossus computer, the world's first programmable, digital, electronic, computing devices |
| 1978 | Floyd, Robert W. | Had a clear influence on methodologies for the creation of efficient and reliable software; helped to found these important sub-fields of computer science: theory of parsing, semantics of programming languages, automatic program verification, automatic program synthesis, and analysis of algorithms |
| 1994 | Floyd, Sally | Founded the field of Active Queue Management; co-invented Random Early Detection, used in almost all Internet routers |
| 1879 | Frege, Gottlob | Extended Aristotelian logic with first-order predicate calculus independently of Charles Sanders Peirce, a crucial precursor in computability theory; also relevant to early work on artificial intelligence, logic programming |
| 1985 | Furber, Stephen Wilson, Sophie | Led the creation of the ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor |
| 1958, 1961, 1967 | Ginsburg, Seymour | Proved "don't-care" circuit minimization does not necessarily yield optimal results; proved that the ALGOL programming language was context-free (linking formal language theory to the problem of compiler writing); invented AFL Theory |
| 1931 | Gödel, Kurt | Proved that Peano arithmetic could not be both logically consistent and complete in first-order predicate calculus. Church, Kleene, and Turing developed the foundations of computation theory based on corollaries to Gödel's work. |
| 1989 | Goldwasser, Shafi | Invented zero-knowledge proofs with Micali and Rackoff; she and Micali received the Turing Award (2012) for this and other work. |
| 2011 | Graham, Susan L. | Awarded the 2009 IEEE John von Neumann Medal for "contributions to programming language design and implementation and for exemplary service to the discipline of computer science" |
| 1953 | Gray, Frank | Physicist and researcher at Bell Labs, developed the reflected binary code (RBC) or Gray code. Gray's methodologies are used for error detection and correction in digital communication systems, such as QAM in digital subscriber line networks. |
| 1974, 2005 | Gray, Jim | Innovator in database systems and transaction processing implementation |
| 1986, 1990 | Grosz, Barbara | Created the first computational model of discourse, establishing the field of research and influencing language-processing technologies; developed SharedPlans model for collaboration in multi-agent systems |
| 1988, 2015 | Gustafson, John | Proved the viability of parallel computing experimentally and theoretically; formulated Gustafson's Law; developed high-efficiency formats for representing real numbers Unum and Posit |
| 1971 | Hamilton, Margaret | Developed the concepts of asynchronous software, priority scheduling, end-to-end testing, and human-in-the-loop decision capability, such as priority displays which then became the foundation for ultra-reliable software design |
| 1950 | Hamming, Richard | Created the fields of error-correcting code, Hamming code, Hamming matrix, the Hamming window, Hamming numbers, sphere-packing (or Hamming bound), and the Hamming distance; established the concept of perfect code |
| 1956, 1958, 1974 | Händler, Wolfgang | Pioneering work on automata theory, parallel computing, artificial intelligence, man-machine interfaces and computer graphics; one of the lead architects of the TR 4 [de] supercomputer; invented Händler diagrams for logic function minimization; devised the Erlangen Classification System [de] (ECS) for parallel computers |
| 2019 | Hanrahan, Pat | Fundamental contributions to 3D computer graphics, with revolutionary impact on computer-generated imagery (CGI) in filmmaking and other applications |
| 1993 | Hartmanis, Juris | Foundations for the field of computational complexity theory |
| 1981, 1995, 1999 | Hejlsberg, Anders | Author of Turbo Pascal at Borland; chief architect of Delphi; designer and lead architect of C# at Microsoft |
| 1976 | Hellman, Martin | Fundamental contributions to modern cryptography. Diffie and Hellman's groundbreaking 1976 paper, "New Directions in Cryptography", introduced the ideas of public-key cryptography and digital signatures, the foundation for security protocols on the Internet today |
| 2017 | Hennessy, John L. | Pioneered a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry |
| 2008, 2012, 2018 | Hinton, Geoffrey | Popularized and enabled the use of artificial neural networks and deep learning, among the most successful tools in modern artificial intelligence efforts; received the Turing Award (2018) for conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing |
| 1961, 1969, 1978, 1980 | Hoare, C. A. R. | Developed the formal language Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP), Hoare logic for verifying program correctness, and Quicksort; fundamental contributions to the definition and design of programming languages |
| 1968 | Holberton, Betty | Wrote the first mainframe sort merge on the Univac |
| 1889 | Hollerith, Herman | Widely regarded as the father of modern machine data processing, his invention of the punched card tabulating machine marked the beginning of the era of semiautomatic data processing systems |
| 1986 | Hopcroft, John | Fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures |
| 1952 | Hopper, Grace | Pioneered work on the necessity for high-level programming languages, which she termed automatic programming; wrote the A-O compiler, which heavily influenced the COBOL language |
| 1997 | Hsu Feng-hsiung | Work leading to the creation of the Deep Thought chess computer; architect and principal designer IBM Deep Blue chess computer that defeated the reigning World Chess Champion, Garry Kasparov, in 1997 |
| 1952 | Huffman, David | Created Huffman coding |
| 1952 | Hurd, Cuthbert | Helped IBM develop its first general-purpose computer, the IBM 701 |
| 1945, 1953 | Huskey, Harry | Contributions to the design of early computers including ENIAC, EDVAC, Pilot ACE, EDVAC, SEAC, SWAC, and Bendix G-15 (the latter described as the first personal computer, being operable by one person) |
| 1954, 1962 | Iverson, Kenneth | Helped establish and taught the first graduate course in computer science (at Harvard); invented the APL programming language; contributions to interactive computing |
| 1801 | Jacquard, Joseph Marie | Built and demonstrated the Jacquard loom, a programmable mechanized loom controlled by a tape constructed from punched cards |
| 1206 | Al-Jazari | Invented programmable machines, including programmable humanoid robots, and the castle clock, an astronomical clock considered the first programmable analog computer |
| 1989 | Kahan, William | Fundamental contributions to numerical analysis; foremost expert on floating-point computations; dedicated to "making the world safe for numerical computations" |
| 1978 | Kahn, Bob | Designed the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), the primary data communication protocols of the Internet and other computer networks |
| 1952, 1953 | Karnaugh, Maurice | Creator of the Karnaugh map, a variation on Edward Veitch's Veitch chart; rediscovery of Allan Marquand's much earlier logical diagram used for logic function minimization |
| 1985 | Karp, Richard M. | Contributions to algorithm theory, including the development of efficient algorithms for network flow and other combinatorial optimization problems; identified polynomial-time computability with the intuitive notion of algorithmic efficiency; contributed to the theory of NP-completeness |
| 1973 | Karpinski, Jacek | Developed the first differential analyzer using transistors; developed one of the first machine-learning algorithms for character and image recognition; invented of one of the first minicomputers, the K-202 |
| 1970~ | Kay, Alan | Pioneered many ideas at the root of object-oriented programming languages; led the team that developed Smalltalk; made fundamental contributions to personal computing |
| 1948–1990s | Kilburn, Tom | With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams–Kilburn tube and developed the world's first electronic stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby, while working at the University of Manchester. His work propelled Manchester and Britain into the forefront of the emerging field of computer science. He also worked on the development of Atlas, one of the most powerful supercomputer in 1960s. |
| 1972–1994 | Kildall, Gary | Introduced the theory of data-flow analysis in optimizing compilers (global expression optimization, Kildall's method). Worked on instruction set emulators (INTERP), found an innovative software relocation method (page boundary relocation), and laid the foundation to the concepts of binary recompilation (XLT86). Developed the first high-level programming language and compiler for microcomputers (PL/M) and the first mainstream operating system for microcomputers (CP/M). Invented the concept of a hardware abstraction layer called the BIOS, with both conceptually laying the foundation to all DOS-based operating systems on personal computers. Worked on diskette track buffering schemes, read-ahead algorithms, virtual disk drives, and file system caching. Developed the first computer interface for video disks and pioneered CD-ROM file systems, introducing the first encyclopedia for computers (The Electronic Encyclopedia). Pioneered a modular PBX communication system integrating land-lines with mobile phones (Intelliphone) and to remotely connect with home appliances. |
| 1957 | Kirsch, Russell Gray | Whilst working for the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), Kirsch used a recently developed image scanner to scan and store the first digital photograph. His scanned photo of his three-month-old son was deemed by Life magazine as one of the "100 Photographs That Changed The World". |
| 1961–1970s | Kleinrock, Leonard | Pioneered the application of queueing theory to model delays in message switching networks in his Ph.D. thesis in 1961–1962, published as a book in 1964. He later published several of the standard works on the subject. In the early 1970s, he applied queueing theory to model the performance of packet switching networks. This work played an influential role in the development of the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. He supervised the graduate students who worked on the early communication protocols for the ARPANET. His theoretical work on hierarchical routing in the late 1970s with student Farouk Kamoun remains critical to the operation of the Internet today. |
| 1936 | Kleene, Stephen Cole | Pioneered work with Alonzo Church on the Lambda Calculus that first laid down the foundations of computation theory. |
| 1968, 1989 | Knuth, Donald | Wrote The Art of Computer Programming and created TeX. Coined the term "analysis of algorithms" and made major contributions to that field, including popularizing Big O notation. |
| 1990–1993 | Lam, Simon S. | Lam was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame (2023) by the Internet Society for “inventing secure sockets in 1991 and implementing the first secure sockets layer, named SNP, in 1993.” In 1990, he conceived the idea of a new security sublayer in the Internet protocol stack. This way, application programmers do not need to know much about implementation details for security. Also, the upper interface of the sublayer would enable implementation changes in the future. Lam's idea of a sublayer which offers a “secure sockets interface” to applications was novel and a radical departure from contemporary security research for Internet applications (e.g., MIT's Kerberos, 1988–1992). SNP was created for Internet applications in general. Subsequent secure sockets layers, SSL and TLS, developed years later for commercial browsers, followed the same architecture and key ideas of SNP. Today, TLS 1.3 is used not only for all e-commerce applications (banking, shopping, etc.) on WWW, but also for email, and many other Internet applications. |
| 1950–1960 | Lamarr, Hedy | At the beginning of World War II, she and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are incorporated into Bluetooth and GPS technology and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi. This work led to their induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. |
| 1974, 1978 | Lamport, Leslie | Formulated algorithms to solve many fundamental problems in distributed systems (e.g. the bakery algorithm). Developed the concept of a logical clock, enabling synchronization between distributed entities based on the events through which they communicate. Created LaTeX. |
| 1972 | Lampson, Butler W. | Development of distributed, personal computing environments and the technology for their implementation: workstations, networks, operating systems, programming systems, displays, security and document publishing. |
| 1964–1966 | Landin, Peter | Used the lambda calculus to formally specify the semantics of programming languages, and developed an early functional programming language named ISWIM. |
| 1951 | Lebedev, Sergei Alekseyevich | Independently designed the first electronic computer in the Soviet Union, MESM, in Kiev, Ukraine. |
| 1670~ | Leibniz, Gottfried | Made advances in symbolic logic, such as the Calculus ratiocinator, that were heavily influential on Gottlob Frege. He anticipated later developments in first-order predicate calculus, which were crucial for the theoretical foundations of computer science. |
| 1960 | Licklider, J. C. R. | Began the investigation of human–computer interaction, leading to many advances in computer interfaces as well as in cybernetics and artificial intelligence. |
| 1987 | Liskov, Barbara | Developed the Liskov substitution principle, which guarantees semantic interoperability of data types in a hierarchy. |
| 1300~ | Llull, Ramon | Designed multiple symbolic representations machines, and pioneered notions of symbolic representation and manipulation to produce knowledge—both of which were major influences on Leibniz. |
| 1852 | Lovelace, Ada | An English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognize that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and created the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first to recognize the full potential of a "computing machine" and the first computer programmer. |
| 1909 | Ludgate, Percy | Charles Babbage in 1843 and Percy Ludgate in 1909 designed the first two Analytical Engines in history. Ludgate's engine used multiplication as its basis (using his own discrete Irish logarithms), had the first multiplier-accumulator (MAC), was first to exploit a MAC to perform division, stored numbers as displacements of rods in shuttles, and had several other novel features, including for program control. |
| 1971 | Martin-Löf, Per | Published an early draft on the type theory that many proof assistants build on. |
| 1943, 1951 | Mauchly, John | With J. Presper Eckert, designed and built the ENIAC, the first modern (all electronic, Turing-complete) computer, and the UNIVAC I, the first commercially available computer. Also worked on BINAC (1949), EDVAC (1949), UNIVAC (1951) with Grace Hopper and Jean Bartik, to develop early stored program computers. |
| 1958 | McCarthy, John | Invented LISP, a functional programming language. |
| 1956, 2012 | McCluskey, Edward J. | Fundamental contributions that shaped the design and testing of digital systems, including the first algorithm for digital logic synthesis, the Quine-McCluskey logic minimization method. |
| 1986 | Meyer, Bertrand | Developed design by contract in the guise of the Eiffel programming language. |
| 2012 | Micali, Silvio | For transformative work that laid the complexity-theoretic foundations for the science of cryptography and in the process pioneered new methods for efficient verification of mathematical proofs in complexity theory. |
| 1991 | Milner, Robin | 1) LCF, the mechanization of Scott's Logic of Computable Functions, probably the first theoretically based yet practical tool for machine assisted proof construction; 2) ML, the first language to include polymorphic type inference together with a type-safe exception-handling mechanism; 3) CCS, a general theory of concurrency. In addition, he formulated and strongly advanced full abstraction, the study of the relationship between operational and denotational semantics. |
| 1963 | Minsky, Marvin | Co-founder of Artificial Intelligence Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of several texts on AI and philosophy. Critic of the perceptron. |
| 1968 | Moore, Charles H. | Inventor of the Forth programming language. |
| 2008 | Nakamoto, Satoshi | The anonymous creator or creators of Bitcoin, the first peer-to-peer digital currency. Nakamoto's 2008 white-paper introduced the concept of the blockchain, a database structure that allows full trust in the decentralized and distributed public transaction ledger of the cryptocurrency. |
| 1934, 1938 | Nakashima Akira | NEC engineer introduced switching circuit theory in papers from 1934 to 1936, laying the foundations for digital circuit design, in digital computers and other areas of modern technology. |
| 1960 | Naur, Peter | Edited the ALGOL 60 Revised Report, introducing Backus-Naur form |
| 1945 | Neumann, John von | Formulated the von Neumann architecture upon which most modern computers are based. |
| 1956 | Newell, Allen | Together with J. C. Shaw and Herbert Simon, the three co-wrote the Logic Theorist, the first true AI program, in the first list-processing language, which influenced LISP. |
| 1943 | Newman, Max | Instigated the production of the Colossus computers at Bletchley Park. After the second world war he established the Computing Machine Laboratory at the University of Manchester where he created the project that built the world's first stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby. |
| 1962 | Nygaard, Kristen | With Ole-Johan Dahl, invented the proto-object oriented language SIMULA. |
| 1642 | Pascal, Blaise | Invented the mechanical calculator. |
| 5th century BCE | Pāṇini | Invented first formal Grammar. Also gave early forms of Backus-Naur form |
| 2017 | Patterson, David | For pioneering a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry. |
| 2011 | Pearl, Judea | Fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning. |
| 1952 | Perlis, Alan | On Project Whirlwind, member of the team that developed the ALGOL programming language, and the first recipient of the Turing Award |
| 1985 | Perlman, Radia | Invented the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges, while working for Digital Equipment Corporation. Has done extensive and innovative research, particularly on encryption and networking. She received the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007, among numerous others. |
| 1964 | Perotto, Pier Giorgio | Computer designer for Olivetti, designed one of the first electronic programmable calculators, the Programma 101 |
| 1932 | Péter, Rózsa | Published a series of papers grounding recursion theory as a separate area of mathematical research, setting the foundation for theoretical computer science. |
| 1995 | Picard, Rosalind | Founded Affective Computing, and laid the foundations for giving computers skills of emotional intelligence. |
| 1996 | Pnueli, Amir | Introducing temporal logic into computing science and for outstanding contributions to program and systems verification. |
| 1936 | Post, Emil L. | Developed the Post machine as a model of computation, independently of Turing. Known also for developing truth tables, the Post correspondence problem used in recursion theory as well as proving what is known as Post's theorem. |
| 1976 | Rabin, Michael O. | The joint paper "Finite Automata and Their Decision Problems", which introduced the idea of nondeterministic machines, which has proved to be an enormously valuable concept. Their (Scott & Rabin) classic paper has been a continuous source of inspiration for subsequent work in this field. |
| 1994 | Reddy, Raj | Pioneering the design and construction of large scale artificial intelligence systems, demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of artificial intelligence technology. |
| 1967–2011 | Ritchie, Dennis | With Ken Thompson, pioneered the C programming language and the Unix computer operating system at Bell Labs. |
| 1977 | Rivest, Ron | Ingenious contribution and making public-key cryptography useful in practice. |
| 1958–1960 | Rosen, Saul | Designed the software of the first transistor-based computer. Also influenced the ALGOL programming language. |
| 1975, 1985 | Rubin, Philip | Developed pioneering computational speech synthesis systems for use in the experimental study of speech perception and production, including articulatory synthesis and sinewave synthesis. Also designed the HADES signal processing system, a predecessor of MATLAB. |
| 1910 | Russell, Bertrand | Made contributions to computer science with his work on mathematical logic (example: truth function). Introduced the notion of type theory. He also introduced type system (along with Alfred North Whitehead) in his work, Principia Mathematica. |
| 1975 | Salton, Gerard | A pioneer of automatic information retrieval, who proposed the vector space model and the inverted index. |
| 1962 | Sammet, Jean E. | Developed the FORMAC programming language. She was also the first to write extensively about the history and categorization of programming languages in 1969, and became the first female president of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1974. |
| 1880, 1898 | Sanders Peirce, Charles | Proved the functional completeness of the NOR gate. Proposed the implementation of logic via electrical circuits, decades before Claude Shannon. Extended Aristotelian logic with first-order predicate calculus, independently of Gottlob Frege, a crucial precursor in computability theory. Also relevant to early work on artificial intelligence, logic programming. |
| 1976 | Scott, Dana | The joint paper "Finite Automata and Their Decision Problems", which introduced the idea of nondeterministic machines, which has proved to be an enormously valuable concept. Their (Scott & Rabin) classic paper has been a continuous source of inspiration for subsequent work in this field. |
| 1977 | Shamir, Adi | Ingenious contribution and making public-key cryptography useful in practice. |
| 1937, 1948 | Shannon, Claude | Founded information theory, and laid foundations for practical digital circuit design. |
| 1971 | Shima Masatoshi | Designed the Intel 4004, the first commercial microprocessor, as well as the Intel 8080, Zilog Z80 and Zilog Z8000 microprocessors, and the Intel 8259, 8255, 8253, 8257 and 8251 chips. |
| 2007 | Sifakis, Joseph | Developing model checking into a highly effective verification technology, widely adopted in the hardware and software industries. |
| 1956, 1957 | Simon, Herbert A. | A political scientist and economist who pioneered artificial intelligence. Co-creator of the Logic Theory Machine and the General Problem Solver programs. |
| 1953 | Spärck Jones, Karen | One of the pioneers of information retrieval and natural language processing. |
| 1972 | Stallman, Richard | Stallman launched the GNU Project in September 1983 to create a Unix-like computer operating system composed entirely of free software. With this, he also launched the free software movement. |
| 1993 | Stearns, Richard E. | Foundations for the field of computational complexity theory. |
| 1981 | Stepanov, Alexander | Stepanov is one of the pioneers when it comes to Generic Programming and he is also the primary designer and implementer of the C++ Standard Template Library. |
| 1937, 1941 | Stibitz, George R. | Father of modern digital computing and remote job entry. Coined the term "digital". Discovered the reflected binary code known as Gray code. Excess-3 code is named after him as well (Stibitz code). |
| 1982 | Stonebraker, Michael | Revolutionized the field of database management systems (DBMSs) and founded multiple successful database companies |
| 1979 | Stroustrup, Bjarne | Invented C++ at Bell Labs |
| 1963 | Sutherland, Ivan | Author of Sketchpad, the ancestor of modern computer-aided drafting (CAD) programs and one of the early examples of object-oriented programming. |
| 1986 | Tarjan, Robert | Fundamental achievements in the design and analysis of algorithms and data structures. |
| 1973 | Thacker, Charles P. | Pioneering design and realization of the Xerox Alto, the first modern personal computer, and in addition for his contributions to the Ethernet and the Tablet PC. |
| 1972, 1973 | Thi, André Truong Trong and François Gernelle | Invention of the Micral N, the earliest commercial, non-kit personal computer based on a microprocessor. |
| 1967 | Thompson, Ken | Created the Unix operating system, the B programming language, Plan 9 operating system, the first machine to achieve a Master rating in chess, and the UTF-8 encoding at Bell Labs and the Go programming language at Google. |
| 1993 | Toh, Chai Keong | Created mobile ad hoc networking; Implemented the first working wireless ad hoc network of laptop computers in 1998 using Linux OS, Lucent WaveLan 802.11 radios, and a new distributed routing protocol transparent to TCP/UDP/IP. |
| 1912, 1914 | Torres Quevedo, Leonardo | In 1912, Leonardo Torres Quevedo built El Ajedrecista (the chess player), one of the first autonomous machines capable of playing chess. As opposed to the human-operated The Turk and Ajeeb, El Ajedrecista was a true automaton built to play chess without human guidance. It played an endgame with three chess pieces, automatically moving a white king and a rook to checkmate the black king moved by a human opponent. In his work Essays on Automatics, published in 1914, Torres Quevedo formulates what will be a new branch of engineering: automation and designed an electromechanical version of Babbage's Analytical engine which introduced floating-point arithmetic. |
| 1991 | Torvalds, Linus | Created the first version of the Linux kernel. |
| 1965 | Tukey, John W. | With James Cooley, created the fast Fourier transform. He invented the term "bit". |
| 1936 | Turing, Alan | Made several fundamental contributions to theoretical computer science, including the Turing machine computational model, the conceiving of the stored program concept and the designing of the high-speed ACE design. Independently of Alonzo Church, he formulated the Church-Turing thesis and proved that first-order logic is undecidable. He also explored the philosophical issues concerning artificial intelligence, proposing what is now known as Turing test. |
| 2010 | Valiant, Leslie | Transformative contributions to the theory of computation, including the theory of probably approximately correct (PAC) learning, the complexity of enumeration and of algebraic computation, and the theory of parallel and distributed computing. |
| 1875, 1875 | Verea, Ramón | Designed and patented the Verea Direct Multiplier, the first mechanical direct multiplier. |
| 1950~ | Wang An | Made key contributions to the development of magnetic core memory. |
| 1955, 1960s, 1974 | Ware, Willis | Co-designer of JOHNNIAC. Chaired committee that developed the Code of Fair Information Practice and led to the Privacy Act of 1974. Vice-chair of the Privacy Protection Study Commission. |
| 1964, 1966 | Weizenbaum, Joseph | One of the fathers of modern artificial intelligence. Creator of the ELIZA program using natural language processing to emulate conversations with a psychologist. |
| 1968 | Wijngaarden, Adriaan van | Developer of the W-grammar first used in the definition of ALGOL 68 |
| 1949 | Wilkes, Maurice | Built the first practical stored program computer (EDSAC) to be completed and for being credited with the ideas of several high-level programming language constructs. |
| 1970 | Wilkinson, James H. | Research in numerical analysis to facilitate the use of the high-speed digital computer, having received special recognition for his work in computations in linear algebra and "backward" error analysis. |
| 1970, 1978 | Wirth, Niklaus | Designed the Pascal, Modula-2 and Oberon programming languages. |
| 2000 | Yao, Andrew | Fundamental contributions to the theory of computation, including the complexity-based theory of pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity. |
| 1955–1958 | Zemanek, Heinz | Developed an early fully transistorized computer, the Mailüfterl. Crucial in the creation of the formal definition of the programming language PL/I. |
| 1938, 1945 | Zuse, Konrad | Built the first digital freely programmable computer, the Z1. Built the first functional program-controlled computer, the Z3 in 1941. The Z3 already used what later became known as Reverse Polish Notation, and it was proven to be Turing-complete in 1998. Produced the world's first commercial computer, the Z4. Designed the first high-level programming language, Plankalkül. |
~ Items marked with a tilde are circa dates.