FREE COMPUTING HISTORY · 1925–1936
Computing becomes a field
Architecture, programming languages, databases, graphics, and AI become recognizable disciplines.
1925–1936
Architecture, programming languages, databases, graphics, and AI become recognizable disciplines.
- Tony Brooker — Autocode — early high-level programming language; Mark 1 Autocode compiler
- Paul Baran — Packet switching theory (RAND)
- Fernando Corbató — Led CTSS, an early influential time-sharing system; led Multics; advanced interactive multi-user computing and password protection
- Kristen Nygaard — Co-created Simula, introducing class, object, inheritance, and simulation mechanisms later recognized as foundational to object-oriented programming
- Oliver Selfridge — Pandemonium architecture — parallel pattern recognition; influenced neural networks
- John Kemeny — Co-created BASIC; Dartmouth time-sharing; chaired Three Mile Island commission
- Allen Newell — Logic Theorist; General Problem Solver; Soar cognitive architecture; Unified Theories of Cognition
- Marvin Minsky — MIT AI Lab co-founder; Perceptrons; Society of Mind; frames theory
- John McCarthy — Coined "artificial intelligence"; LISP; garbage collection; time-sharing; situation calculus
- Robert Noyce — Planar silicon IC; co-founded Fairchild and Intel; "Mayor of Silicon Valley"
- David Wheeler — Operationalized closed subroutines and reusable libraries with Maurice Wilkes and Stanley Gill; EDSAC; Wheeler jump; early computer-science doctorate
- Watts Humphrey — CMM; Personal Software Process; software quality; "Father of software quality"
- Noam Chomsky — Chomsky hierarchy; generative grammar; influenced compiler theory and NLP
- Peter Naur — ALGOL 60; Backus-Naur Form; coined "datalogy"
- Frank Rosenblatt — Developed the trainable perceptron and Mark I Perceptron, building on earlier neural models and advancing connectionist learning
- Juris Hartmanis — Founded computational complexity theory (with Stearns); time hierarchy theorem; Turing Award
- Jean Sammet — FORMAC; programming language history; first female ACM president
- Martin Davis — Hilbert's 10th problem; Davis-Putnam algorithm; computability theory
- Thomas Kurtz — Co-created BASIC; Dartmouth time-sharing; True BASIC
- Gordon Moore — Moore's Law; co-founded Intel
- Edsger Dijkstra — Structured programming; shortest path; semaphores; THE multiprogramming system; "Go To Considered Harmful"
- Morris Chang — Founded TSMC — invented the semiconductor foundry model; enabled fabless chip design
- Ole-Johan Dahl — Co-created Simula, introducing class, object, inheritance, and virtual-method mechanisms later foundational to object-oriented programming
- Frederick Brooks — The Mythical Man-Month; IBM System/360; "No Silver Bullet"
- Michael Rabin — Nondeterministic automata; randomized algorithms; Rabin-Scott theorem; Rabin cryptosystem
- Solomon Golomb — Polyomino theory; shift register sequences; Golomb ruler
- Bob Taylor — Funded ARPANET; led Xerox PARC CS Lab; led DEC Systems Research Center
- Frances Allen — Compiler optimization pioneer; first woman Turing Award winner; interprocedural analysis
- Dana Scott — Domain theory; denotational semantics (with Strachey); Scott topology; Rabin-Scott theorem
- William Kahan — IEEE 754 floating-point standard; "Father of floating point"; Kahan summation algorithm
- Tony Hoare — Quicksort; Hoare logic; CSP; null reference ("billion dollar mistake")
- Leonard Kleinrock — Queueing theory for packet networks; ARPANET first message (UCLA)
- Carver Mead — VLSI methodology (with Conway); coined "Moore's Law"; neuromorphic engineering
- Niklaus Wirth — Pascal, Modula-2, Oberon; "Wirth's Law"; structured programming
- Edward Fredkin — Digital physics; reversible computing; Fredkin gate; computational cosmology
- Robin Milner — ML language; Hindley-Milner type inference; π-calculus; CCS (process algebra); 3 Turing-landmark contributions
- Richard Karp — Karp's 21 NP-complete problems; Rabin-Karp algorithm; computational biology
- Barry Boehm — COCOMO; spiral model; software economics; anchored agile
- Edward Feigenbaum — Expert systems pioneer; Dendral; "Knowledge is power" in AI; Knowledge Engineering
- Judea Pearl — Bayesian networks; causal inference; do-calculus; The Book of Why; counterfactual reasoning