Technology
Inventors, computing pioneers, and the tools they build.
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People in Technology
141 profiles
MathematicianAda Lovelace
Recognising what a programmable machine could do beyond arithmetic.
MathematicianAlan Turing
Helping break Enigma and laying foundations for computer science.
Computer scientistGrace Hopper
Helping make computer programming readable in English-like language.
Computer scientistTim Berners-Lee
Inventing the World Wide Web.
InventorNikola Tesla
Developing motors and systems for alternating-current electricity.
InventorThomas Edison
Developing the phonograph and practical electric-lighting systems.
InventorAlexander Graham Bell
Developing and patenting an early practical telephone.
MathematicianClaude Shannon
Establishing the mathematical foundations of digital communication.
EngineerFerdinand Porsche
Designing influential cars, including the Volkswagen prototype.
InventorAlfred Nobel
Inventing dynamite and leaving the fortune that established the Nobel Prizes.
Business executiveTim Cook
Leading Apple through the iPhone era as chief executive from 2011 to 2026.
ActorHedy Lamarr
Co-inventing a frequency-hopping communications system while working as a Hollywood film star.
EngineerKarl Benz
Building and patenting a pioneering practical petrol-powered automobile.
EngineerGustave Eiffel
Leading the company that built the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty’s internal framework.
EngineerA. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Helping develop India’s launch vehicles and missiles before serving as president.
Business executiveSundar Pichai
Leading Google and its parent company Alphabet after overseeing products including Chrome.
Business executiveSatya Nadella
Leading Microsoft’s shift toward cloud computing and subscription services.
Business executiveJensen Huang
Co-founding Nvidia and helping take graphics processors into artificial-intelligence computing.
InventorGranville T. Woods
Improving electrical railway systems and communication with moving trains.
InventorLewis Latimer
Improving carbon-filament manufacture and helping develop early electric lighting.
InventorGarrett Morgan
Developing a safety hood and an improved three-position traffic signal.
EngineerFazlur Rahman Khan
Developing structural systems that made very tall buildings more efficient.
EngineerIsambard Kingdom Brunel
Designing ambitious railways, bridges and ocean-going steamships.
EngineerGeorge Stephenson
Helping establish steam railways as a practical transport system.
EngineerJames Watt
Improving the steam engine with a separate condenser.
EngineerLisa Su
Leading AMD’s revival as a major processor company.
Game designerShigeru Miyamoto
Creating Mario and The Legend of Zelda with Nintendo teams.
Computer scientistDemis Hassabis
Co-founding DeepMind and advancing protein-structure prediction with AlphaFold.
Game designerHideo Kojima
Creating Metal Gear and cinematic, unconventional video games.
InventorLonnie Johnson
Inventing the Super Soaker while pursuing engineering and energy research.
Computer scientistFei-Fei Li
Leading ImageNet, a dataset that accelerated computer vision research.
Computer scientistDonald Knuth
Writing The Art of Computer Programming and creating the TeX typesetting system.
Computer scientistDennis Ritchie
Creating the C programming language and co-developing Unix.
Computer scientistKen Thompson
Creating the original Unix operating system and helping design UTF-8 and Go.
Computer scientistLinus Torvalds
Creating the Linux kernel and the Git version-control system.
Computer scientistMargaret Hamilton
Leading the team that developed onboard flight software for NASA’s Apollo missions.
EngineerMary Jackson
Becoming NASA’s first Black woman engineer and helping open technical careers to others.
Computer scientistRadia Perlman
Inventing the Spanning Tree Protocol, which helped computer networks grow without collapsing into loops.
Computer scientistVint Cerf
Co-designing TCP/IP, the communication rules that helped make the Internet possible.
EngineerRobert Kahn
Co-designing TCP/IP with Vint Cerf and helping establish the Internet’s open network architecture.
Computer scientistDouglas Engelbart
Inventing the computer mouse and demonstrating an early vision of interactive, collaborative computing.
Computer scientistBarbara Liskov
Helping programmers build reliable software through data abstraction, the CLU language and the Liskov substitution principle.
Computer scientistSophie Wilson
Co-designing the original ARM processor architecture and writing BBC BASIC for the BBC Micro.
Computer scientistShafi Goldwasser
Co-developing zero-knowledge proofs and mathematical foundations for modern cryptographic security.
Computer scientistYukihiro Matsumoto
Creating Ruby, the programming language designed around expressive code and programmer enjoyment.
Computer scientistRaj Reddy
Pioneering speech recognition and artificial intelligence, and founding Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute.
Computer scientistAdele Goldberg
Co-developing Smalltalk and helping bring object-oriented programming and graphical computing to a wider audience.
Computer scientistGuido van Rossum
Creating Python, the programming language known for readable code and use across science, automation and software development.
Computer scientistAdi Shamir
Co-inventing RSA public-key cryptography and developing influential methods for sharing and analysing secrets.
Computer scientistAndrew Yao
Establishing foundations of computational complexity, secure computation and communication between computers.
Computer scientistWard Cunningham
Creating the first wiki: a website its readers could edit together.
Computer scientistJean E. Sammet
Helping develop COBOL and leading the creation of FORMAC for symbolic mathematics.
Computer scientistBjarne Stroustrup
Creating C++, the programming language behind systems, games and high-performance software.
EngineerAjay Bhatt
Helping develop USB, the standard that simplified connecting devices to computers.
EntrepreneurJimmy Wales
Co-founding Wikipedia, the collaboratively written free encyclopedia.
Computer scientistGeoffrey Hinton
Helping establish deep learning and the neural networks behind modern artificial intelligence.
EntrepreneurNandan Nilekani
Co-founding Infosys and leading the launch of India’s Aadhaar identification system.
Computer scientistYoshua Bengio
Advancing deep learning and neural language models.
Computer scientistYann LeCun
The deep-learning pioneer whose convolutional neural networks helped computers recognise handwriting and images.
Computer scientistJohn McCarthy
The artificial-intelligence pioneer who coined the field’s name and developed Lisp.
Computer scientistSteve Furber
The engineer who co-designed the BBC Micro and the original ARM processor.
Computer scientistMarvin Minsky
The artificial-intelligence pioneer who co-founded MIT’s AI laboratory and wrote The Society of Mind.
Computer scientistNiklaus Wirth
Creating Pascal and influential approaches to structured programming.
Computer scientistEdsger W. Dijkstra
Developing the shortest-path algorithm and advancing structured programming.
Computer scientistHerbert A. Simon
Explaining bounded rationality and helping establish artificial intelligence research.
Computer scientistTony Hoare
Creating quicksort and foundational methods for reasoning about programs.
Computer scientistFrances Allen
Developing ways for compilers to make computer programs run more efficiently.
Computer scientistEdgar F. Codd
Creating the relational model that underpins modern databases.
Computer scientistJohn Backus
Leading the IBM team that created FORTRAN.
Computer scientistSilvio Micali
Co-developing zero-knowledge proofs and mathematical foundations for modern cryptography.
Computer scientistLeslie Lamport
Developing foundations of distributed computing and creating LaTeX.
Computer scientistRasmus Lerdorf
Creating PHP, the scripting language used to build dynamic websites.
Computer scientistMichael Stonebraker
Turning database research into influential systems including Ingres and Postgres.
Computer scientistHåkon Wium Lie
Proposing Cascading Style Sheets, the language that controls how web pages look.
Computer scientistJim Gray
Developing foundational methods for reliable database transactions.
Computer scientistWhitfield Diffie
Pioneering public-key cryptography with Martin Hellman.
Computer scientistMartin Hellman
Co-developing public-key cryptography and the Diffie–Hellman key exchange.
Computer scientistRon Rivest
Co-inventing RSA, a foundational public-key cryptosystem.
ScientistLeonard Adleman
Co-creating RSA encryption and showing that DNA can perform computations.
Computer scientistAndrew Barto
Helping establish the foundations of reinforcement learning.
Computer scientistJames Gosling
Creating the original design of the Java programming language.
Computer scientistBrendan Eich
Creating JavaScript and co-founding Mozilla and Brave.
EntrepreneurMitchell Baker
Helping build Mozilla and its open-source browser project.
EntrepreneurMarc Andreessen
Co-developing Mosaic and co-founding Netscape.
EngineerMary Golda Ross
Pioneering aerospace engineering as a Cherokee woman at Lockheed.
Computer scientistAllen Newell
Helping create early artificial-intelligence programs and models of human problem-solving.
Computer scientistAmir Pnueli
Introducing temporal logic into the verification of computer systems.
Computer scientistGilles Brassard
Co-developing the BB84 protocol for quantum cryptography.
MathematicianJames H. Wilkinson
Explaining and controlling numerical error in computer calculations.
Computer scientistRichard S. Sutton
Developing the foundations of reinforcement learning.
AviatorVladimir Ilyushin
Test-flying Sukhoi aircraft and helping organise Soviet rugby.
Computer scientistAvi Wigderson
Explaining the role of randomness in computation.
InventorT. Peter Brody
Co-developing active-matrix display technology.
EngineerThomas Haug
Helping standardise international mobile telephone networks.
Computer scientistJuris Hartmanis
Establishing foundations of computational complexity theory.
InventorJesse Ramsden
Making precision instruments for astronomy, navigation and surveying.
Computer scientistKenneth E. Iverson
Creating APL and its mathematical approach to programming.
Computer scientistAlfred Aho
Developing compiler theory, text-search algorithms and influential computing textbooks.
Computer scientistOle-Johan Dahl
Co-creating Simula and the foundations of object-oriented programming.
EngineerIsamu Akasaki
Developing efficient blue LEDs based on gallium nitride.
EngineerFrank Whittle
Developing the turbojet engine in Britain.
Computer scientistMichael O. Rabin
Advancing automata theory and probabilistic algorithms.
EngineerAndrew Viterbi
Inventing the Viterbi algorithm and co-founding Qualcomm.
Computer scientistManuel Blum
Advancing computational complexity, cryptography and program checking.
Computer scientistKristen Nygaard
Co-developing Simula and the foundations of object-oriented programming.
Computer scientistPeter Naur
Helping define ALGOL 60 and the Backus–Naur notation.
EngineerHans von Ohain
Developing the turbojet that powered the Heinkel He 178
EngineerCharles K. Kao
Establishing the feasibility of fibre-optic communication.
PhysicistWillard Boyle
Co-inventing the charge-coupled device used in digital imaging.
EngineerShuji Nakamura
Developing efficient blue LEDs used in modern lighting.
EngineerGeorge H. Heilmeier
Helping develop the first liquid-crystal displays.
EngineerJames Hillier
Building an early high-resolution electron microscope.
Computer scientistButler Lampson
Helping develop distributed personal computing at Xerox PARC.
Computer scientistRobert Taylor
Leading teams behind computer networking and the personal computer.
Computer scientistRobert Tarjan
Developing fundamental graph algorithms and data structures.
Computer scientistIvan Sutherland
Inventing Sketchpad and pioneering interactive computer graphics
PhysicistRobert Noyce
Co-inventing the integrated circuit and co-founding Intel
PhysicistGeorge E. Smith
Co-inventing the CCD image sensor
Computer scientistStephen Cook
Establishing a foundation of NP-completeness theory.
Computer scientistCharles Bachman
Early database-management systems and data-structure diagrams.
EngineerCathcart William Methven
Harbour engineering in Durban and other southern African ports.
Computer scientistMaurice Wilkes
Leading EDSAC’s development and introducing microprogramming.
EngineerGodfrey Hounsfield
Developing practical X-ray computed tomography.
Computer scientistJohn Cocke
Reduced-instruction-set computing and compiler optimisation.
EngineerNick Holonyak
Developing a semiconductor device that emitted visible red light.
MathematicianRichard Hamming
Error-correcting codes and reliable digital computation.
InventorCharles Babbage
Designing mechanical calculating engines.
Computer scientistRichard E. Stearns
Foundations of computational complexity theory.
Computer scientistRobin Milner
Developing ML and mathematical tools for concurrent computing.
EngineerJack Kilby
Co-inventing the integrated circuit.
EngineerRachid Yazami
Developing the graphite anode used in lithium-ion batteries.
EngineerRudolf E. Kálmán
Developing the Kalman filter for estimating signals from noisy measurements.
Computer scientistJoseph Sifakis
Developing model checking for computer-system verification.
Computer scientistWilliam Kahan
Shaping reliable floating-point arithmetic in computers.
PhysicistWolfgang Helfrich
Co-developing twisted-nematic liquid-crystal display technology.
EngineerYoshihisa Okumura
Developing radio-propagation models used in mobile networks.
EngineerEric Fossum
Developing CMOS active-pixel image-sensor technology
Computer scientistJack Dongarra
Creating numerical software used in high-performance computing.
Computer scientistCharles P. Thacker
Leading the design of the Xerox Alto computer.
Computer scientistRichard M. Karp
Algorithms and the theory of computational complexity.
Computer scientistDana Scott
Foundations of automata theory and programming-language semantics.