Pioneers In The Field Of IT & Computer Science

Today in one of the schools I am supporting, they were having a history lesson in one of the class rooms i was setting up a projector in. And it got me thinking about an article i could put together about the past and present pioneers in the field of IT & computer science, so here it is. 

"Class this is your history lesson for today"


This article presents a list of individuals who helped in the creation, development and imagining of what computers and electronics can do. Here are some of them with a brief description about them:

Pioneers In The Field Of IT & Computer Science


Who they were/are:- 

Charles Babbage (26 December 1791 - 18 October 1871) is considered to be a "father of the computer". He was a mathematician and inventor who originated the concept of the programmable computer. His Difference Engine #2 was finally built by the London Science Museum between 1989-1991 and remains on display in the museum. 

George Boole (2 November 1815 - 8 December 1864) was the inventor of Boolean Logic (how all modern didgital computers function), he is regarded as the founder of the field of Computer Science.

J. Presper Eckert (9 April 1919 - 3 June 1995), together with John Mauchly invented the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC) and designed the first commercial computer in the U.S.A, the UNIVAC. 

William Henry "Bill" Gates (born 28 October 1955) co-founder of Microsoft and currently the wealthiest person on the planet. Although he and Microsoft have their detractors, no one can deny the impact that they have had on world of computers 

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) Co-founded Apple along with Steve Wozniak. Together with Wozniak and others he designed one of the first commercially successful personal computers, the Apple II. After returning to Apple as CEO in 1997 he turned a failing Apple around to be the massive success that it is today.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 - 27 November 1952) was the daughter of poet Lord Byron and is widely known in modern times as simply Ada Lovelace. If Babbage is the father of the computer, then Lovelace is the mother. Today she is held as the first computer programmer, she encoded algorithms in a form to be processed by Babbage's, at the time un-built, Analytical Engine. The computer programming language 'Ada' is named after her. 

Gordon Earle Moore (born 3 January 1929) co-founded the Intel Corporation and authored Moore's Law in which he describes the historical trend in computer hardware; the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit has continued to double approximately every two years.

Max Newman (7 February 1897 – 22 February 1984) created the mechanical computer 'Heath Robbinson' used to break the German cipher Lorenz SZ40/42 (nicknamed Tunny). His machine was the forerunner to the electronic computer Colossus, designed by Tommy Flowers

Dennis Richie (9 September 9 1941 - 12 October 2011) created the C programming language and co-created the UNIX Operating System. C is one of the most widely used programming languages of all time, and has greatly influenced the creation of many other programming languages.

Tony Sale (30 January 1931 – 28 August 2011) was a historian of computing. He led the project to rebuild a replica of the Colossus computer at Bletchley Park in 2007.

Alan Mathison Turing OBE (23 June 1912 - 7 June 1954) was a mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. Turing fielded the idea that formal and simple devices would be capable of performing any conceivable mathematical computation if it were represented as an algorithm, these became known as Turing Machines. To this day these machines are the central object of study in the theory of computation. Turing's work during World War 2 on breaking German ciphers was instrumental to the Allied war effort. 

Konrad Zuse created the first Turing-complete computer - the Z3. It became operational in May 1941 but was destroyed in 1943 by Allied bombardment of Berlin.