Jed McCaleb, who was also the founder of the Stellar Development Foundation, is widely regarded as the person who is responsible for the invention of Lumens.
McCaleb is credited with founding the first successful bitcoin exchange, which was called Mt. Gox. After that, McCaleb would go on to hold the position of chief technology officer (CTO) at Ripple, the company that is currently guiding the development of the XRP Ledger.
He would hold this position until 2013 when he left Ripple to found Stellar.