Figures

Aristotle systematized deductive reasoning by studying relations between terms and the forms of syllogisms.

Boethius’s Latin logical writings helped transmit ancient logic into medieval intellectual traditions.

Chrysippus developed Stoic reasoning about whole propositions joined by connectives. This differs from studying only relations between category terms.

Dignāga developed accounts of inference and argument in Indian Buddhist philosophy, including the wheel of reasons.

Euclid organized mathematical propositions and proofs in the Elements. The work became a durable model of systematic mathematical exposition.

Mozi’s teachings initiated the Mohist tradition of explicit argument, standards of judgment and debate in ancient China.

Plato founded the Academy in Athens, where philosophy and mathematics formed part of a shared intellectual setting.

Al-Khwarizmi wrote on Hindu-Arabic numerals and algebra. The word algorithm derives from the transmission of his name.

Avicenna revised syllogistic reasoning, including the treatment of modal propositions and their logical relations.

Brahmagupta wrote on mathematics and astronomy, including number systems, square-root procedures and quadratic equations.

Buridan developed medieval logic through work on terms, arguments and their use, including his Summulae de dialectica.

Abelard wrote commentaries and independent works on dialectic, logic and the philosophy of language.

Llull combined symbolic notation with combinatorial diagrams in a project to organize knowledge and support argument.

Ockham’s Summa of Logic treats terms, propositions and arguments, including modal syllogisms.

Lovelace translated an account of Babbage’s Analytical Engine and expanded it with notes explaining its programming possibilities.

Pascal developed the Pascaline, a mechanical calculator associated with his father’s tax-accounting work.

Babbage’s calculating engines connect mechanical engineering with the design of programmable calculation.

Leibniz worked on mechanical calculation and binary arithmetic, alongside mathematics and philosophy.

Hollerith developed the electric punched-card tabulating system used for the United States census.

Jacquard developed a loom mechanism in which linked punched cards controlled weaving patterns.

Turing used an abstract machine model to examine computable numbers and the limits of effective procedures.

Church developed the lambda calculus and proved an undecidability result for first-order logic.

Two connections in Shannon’s work — logic with switching circuits, and probability with communication.

Hilbert investigated the foundations of geometry through explicit axioms and their relationships. His research ranged across mathematics and physics.

Cantor developed set theory and the study of different infinite cardinalities.

Boole brought algebraic methods into the study of logic. His mathematical work also included probability and differential equations.

Frege’s Begriffsschrift introduced a formal logical language with implication, negation and universal quantification.

Gödel proved completeness for first-order logic and incompleteness results for formal arithmetic.

Wang patented a pulse-transfer controlling device that contributed to practical magnetic-core memory.

Holberton, then Betty Snyder, was one of the six ENIAC programmers.

Berry collaborated with John Atanasoff to design and build the Atanasoff-Berry Computer at Iowa State.

Vaughan led the segregated West Area Computing unit at NACA and later became an expert FORTRAN programmer.

Faggin developed silicon-gate technology and led implementation work on Intel’s MCS-4 chips, working with Masatoshi Shima.

Spence, then Frances Bilas, was one of the six ENIAC programmers.

Moore helped found Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel and described a trend in component integration that became known as Moore’s law.

Aiken proposed the automatic calculator that became the Harvard Mark I, designed and built with IBM.

Kilby demonstrated circuits whose active and passive elements were formed from semiconductor material at Texas Instruments.

Forrester developed coincident-current magnetic-core memory while leading the MIT Whirlwind project.

Bartik programmed ENIAC and helped adapt it for instructions stored in memory.

Atanasoff designed and built the Atanasoff-Berry Computer with graduate student Clifford Berry at Iowa State.

Bardeen investigated semiconductor surface states and developed the point-contact transistor with Walter Brattain at Bell Labs.

Mauchly co-designed ENIAC with J. Presper Eckert.

Von Neumann contributed to the logical design of computers and to automata theory, alongside extensive mathematical research.

Johnson performed mathematical analysis and calculations for the United States space program after joining NACA.

McNulty was one of the six women who programmed ENIAC.

Zuse built program-controlled electromechanical computers and developed the early programming language Plankalkül.

Meltzer, then Marlyn Wescoff, was one of the six ENIAC programmers.

Jackson worked in NACA’s West Area Computing section before moving into wind-tunnel research and aeronautical engineering.

Wiener brought together questions of control and communication in cybernetics, alongside mathematical work in probability and related areas.

Eckert co-designed ENIAC with John Mauchly.

Hamming is associated with error-correcting codes that bear his name.

Noyce proposed a monolithic integrated-circuit structure using metal interconnections above an oxide layer, building on Jean Hoerni’s planar process.

Teitelbaum, then Ruth Lichterman, was one of the six ENIAC programmers.

Lebedev led the team that developed the MESM electronic computer at the Institute of Electrical Engineering in Kyiv.

Brattain worked with John Bardeen on the germanium point-contact transistor at Bell Labs.

Shockley organized Bell Labs’ solid-state group and pursued semiconductor amplifier concepts. Bardeen and Brattain achieved the point-contact device within that research setting.

Kay contributed to object-oriented programming, personal computing and graphical interfaces, and led the team that developed Smalltalk.

Liskov developed ideas about data abstraction and modularity and led the team that created CLU.

Stroustrup designed and implemented C++ at Bell Labs, drawing on C and ideas from Simula.

Bachman developed the Integrated Data Store, a database system using network-oriented data structures.

Ritchie created the C programming language and co-developed Unix with Ken Thompson at Bell Labs.

Knuth contributed to the systematic study of algorithms and created the TeX typesetting system.

McIlroy developed the idea of Unix pipes and promoted composing programs from small tools that exchange streams.

Codd proposed the relational model, organizing data by values and relations rather than navigational storage paths.

Dijkstra developed a shortest-path algorithm for graphs, a central contribution to algorithm design.

Brooks contributed to computer architecture, operating systems and software engineering, including management of IBM System/360 work and The Mythical Man-Month.

Kildall developed CP/M and established Digital Research to develop and market personal-computer software.

Hopper worked on early computers and compiler development, including participation in the team behind FLOW-MATIC.

Backus led work on FORTRAN and contributed to notation for specifying programming-language syntax.

Thompson co-created Unix with Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs and worked on languages and operating systems including B and Plan 9.

Nygaard co-designed Simula with Ole-Johan Dahl, helping establish object-oriented programming.

Hamilton led work on Apollo flight software and contributed to software engineering, with earlier experience on weather and SAGE software.

Wirth developed programming languages including Pascal, Modula-2 and Oberon, alongside work on programming environments.

Dahl co-designed Simula with Kristen Nygaard, helping establish object-oriented programming.

Naur contributed to ALGOL 60’s definition, programming-language design and compiler design.

Hoare developed Quicksort and contributed to the theory of programming languages.

Shamir collaborated with Ronald Rivest and Leonard Adleman on practical public-key cryptography.

Kahn worked on ARPANET system design and packet switching at BBN and helped initiate open-architecture internetworking.

Lampson contributed to networked personal workstations, operating systems, security and document systems, including work on the Alto at Xerox PARC.

Thacker led hardware development of the Xerox Alto and contributed to networked personal computing.

Engelbart and his laboratory developed interactive tools including the mouse and NLS, combining text, hypertext and collaboration.

Bina co-created the Mosaic browser with Marc Andreessen at NCSA.

Sutherland developed Sketchpad, an interactive graphical system described in his MIT doctoral dissertation.

Licklider articulated a vision of globally networked computers and supported interactive computing through his work at ARPA.

Spärck Jones researched automatic language processing, document retrieval, summarization and the evaluation of information systems.

Adleman collaborated with Ronald Rivest and Adi Shamir on practical public-key cryptography.

Lamport contributed to the theory and design of distributed and concurrent systems and created the initial LaTeX document preparation system.

Andreessen co-created the Mosaic browser with Eric Bina at NCSA.

Hellman co-authored New Directions in Cryptography with Whitfield Diffie and contributed to public-key cryptography alongside Diffie and Ralph Merkle.

Zimmermann created Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and made email encryption software available for public use.

Metcalfe developed Ethernet at Xerox PARC in collaboration with David Boggs.

Taylor supported research in interactive computing and networking through leadership and funding, including support for Engelbart’s work.

Rivest collaborated with Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman on practical public-key cryptography.

Goldwasser helped establish complexity-based cryptography and methods for efficient proof verification with Silvio Micali.

Micali helped establish complexity-based cryptography and methods for efficient proof verification with Shafi Goldwasser.

Nelson developed ideas about hypertext and a multimedia publishing system called Xanadu.

Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web at CERN by combining hypertext with Internet communication and resource identifiers.

Bush described the Memex, an imagined microfilm-based system for linking and retrieving documents through associative trails.

Cerf co-developed the TCP/IP protocol suite with Robert Kahn and helped guide the development of internetworking.

Diffie worked with Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle on public-key cryptography and co-authored New Directions in Cryptography with Hellman.

Gates co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen and led its growth as a software company.

Frankston founded Software Arts with Dan Bricklin to develop and sell the VisiCalc spreadsheet for personal computers.

Gregg developed performance-analysis methods and tools, including work on flame graphs and contributions to BPF tracing tools.

Bricklin helped develop the VisiCalc spreadsheet, which gave business users a compelling application for personal computers.

Hinton contributed conceptual and engineering advances in deep neural networks, recognized jointly with Bengio and LeCun.

Van Rossum created Python and guided the development of its language and community.

McCarthy helped establish artificial intelligence as a research field, developed Lisp and proposed ideas for time-sharing.

Page co-authored the paper describing the Google search prototype with Sergey Brin, using hyperlink structure in Web search.

Torvalds created the Linux kernel and coordinated its open-source development with a growing community of contributors.

Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates and served as its chief technologist during its early years.

Stallman announced the GNU project to build a free operating system and helped establish the free-software movement.

The name Satoshi Nakamoto appears on the Bitcoin paper proposing peer-to-peer electronic cash with proof-of-work transaction ordering.

Brin co-authored the paper describing the Google search prototype with Larry Page, using hyperlink structure in Web search.

Wilson worked with Steve Furber on the BBC Micro and ARM architecture, and wrote the BBC BASIC interpreter.

Furber was a principal designer of the BBC Micro and co-designed the ARM processor with Sophie Wilson at Acorn.

Jobs co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and later founded NeXT, contributing leadership in personal computing and interface design.

Wozniak designed the Apple I and Apple II and co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs.

LeCun contributed conceptual and engineering advances in deep neural networks, recognized jointly with Hinton and Bengio.

Bengio contributed conceptual and engineering advances in deep neural networks, recognized jointly with Hinton and LeCun.