Computer science/Catalogs/Breakthroughs

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This is a list of people who have made major conceptual breakthroughs in computer science.

• Backus, John (1924-2007) - inventor of FORTRAN
• Babbage, Charles (1791-1871) - early theorist for how a computing machine could be programmed
• Boole, George (1815-1864) - inventor of Boolean algebra
• Bricklin, Dan - invention of the first spreadsheet
• Cerf, Vinton - practical definition of the catenet principle of interconnecting networks, the basic idea of the Internet
• Church, Alonzo (1903-1995) - proof that first-order logic is undecidable; Church's thesis; creation of the lambda calculus
• E. F. Codd (1923 - 2003) - the relational model for database management
• Deutsch, David (1953 - ) - pioneer of quantum computing
• Eric Drexler (1955 -) - father of molecular nanotechnology
• Jay Forrester (1918 -) - invention of core memory in 1953 (while working on the Whirlwind computer)
• Fourier, Joseph (1768-1830) - invented of Fourier series (long before electronic computers), making possible imaging algorithms for radar, xrays, etc
• Hamming, Richard (1915-1998) - invention of Hamming code for error correction
• Hopper, Grace (1906-1992) - invention of the compiler
• Knuth, Donald - created an encyclopedia of algorithms; pioneer in analysis of algorithms
• Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm - discovered the binary number system (base 2)
• Lovelace, Ada (1815-1852) - wrote first computer program (instructions for calculating Bernoulli numbers on a Babbage machine)
• Ritchie, Dennis (1941- ) - Created C programming language, co-developer of Unix.
• Shannon, Claude (1916-2001) - association of boolean algebra with digital design; pioneering work in information theory
• Tukey, John (1915-2000) - introduction of the word "bit" as a contraction of binary digit and the word "software" in a computing context
• Turing, Alan (1912-1954) - theory of computability
• von Neumann, John (1903-1957) - first publication proposing use of same memory space for program instructions and data (idea now recognized as not created by JVN), merge sort algorithm, cellular automata
• Weiner, Norbert (1894 - 1964) Cybernetics.
• Zuse, Konrad (1910-1995) - likely invented the first electronic computer; likely the first designer to propose pipelining in processors