Unit 7 Vocabulary: People in IT

Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Ada Lovelace
US
UK
(December 10, 1815 - November 27, 1852) British mathematician known for being the world's first computer programmer as well as envisioning computers as more than just military number crunchers
US
UK
"Ada Lovelace was actually born Augusta Ada Byron, the only child of poet Lord Byron and mathematician Lady Byron."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Alan Mathison Turing
US
UK
(June 23, 1912 - June 7, 1954) English computer scientist known as the "father of computer science"; inventor of a famous test used to see if a computer can think and behave like a human.
US
UK
"Alan Turing helped invent the 'Tunny' machine, which cracked the Germans' 'Enigma machine' encryption code during World War II."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Bill Gates
US
UK
(born October 28, 1955) American co-founder of Microsoft Corporation, and developer of Windows; he was the richest man in the world for many years, before he gave away a lot of his wealth to charity.
US
UK
"The boy told his mother he wanted to be as rich as Bill Gates."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Brendan Eich
US
UK
(born July 4, 1961) American computer programmer, and technology executive, who invented the JavaScript programming language, and co-founded the Mozilla Foundation, and later the Brave web browser project.
US
UK
"Some IT projects seem to take forever, but legendary programmer Brendan Eich coded the first version of JavaScript in just 10 days."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Charles Babbage
US
UK
(December 26, 1791 - October 18, 1871) English mathematician and analytical philosopher who drew up plans for the first programmable computer called the Difference Engine
US
UK
"Charles Babbage would likely be overwhelmed at the power of a typical desktop computer today."
Proper noun (thing)
US
UK
Dennis Ritchie
US
UK
(born September 9, 1941) American computer scientist, and inventor of the C programming language, which became the foundation for many later programming languages and systems, including Unix
US
UK
"Dennis Ritchie did a really good job when writing the C programming language in 1969, because it's still widely used today."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Edgar Frank Codd
US
UK
(August 23, 1923 - April 18, 2003) English computer scientist known for his work in inventing the "relational model" for databases, which is still in use today
US
UK
"Edgar Frank Codd was known for pressuring IBM to introduce RBDMs to its customers, which later provided huge benefits to everyone."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
George Boole
US
UK
(November 2, 1815 - December 8, 1864) English mathematician, and philosopher who introduced a system of binary logic, fundamental to computer science, and digital circuit design
US
UK
"All modern computers owe a debt to George Boole's algebraic calculations."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Gordon Moore
US
UK
(born January 3, 1929) American co-founder of Intel Corporation, and the author of a law, which states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years
US
UK
"Gordon Moore donated $600 million to Caltech in 2001, which is perhaps the largest gift ever to an institution of higher education."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Grace Hopper
US
UK
(December 9, 1906 - January 1, 1992) American computer scientist, credited with inventing the first high-level programming language, FLOW-MATIC, which heavily inspired COBOL
US
UK
"In 1947 while working away on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University, a moth got stuck in the circuitry and thus the term "computer bug" was coined."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Guido van Rossum
US
UK
(born Jan 31, 1956) Dutch inventor of the Python programming language, known for its readability and simplicity
US
UK
"Guido van Rossum has been working at Google since 2005, where he is allowed to spend half his day improving the Python language."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
James Gosling
US
UK
(born May 19, 1955) Canadian computer scientist, known as the father of the Java programming language, commonly associated with enterprise software
US
UK
"James Gosling earned a Ph.D in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University with a doctoral thesis entitled, "The Algebraic Manipulation of Constraints"."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
John Warner Backus
US
UK
(December 3, 1924 - March 17, 2007) American computer scientist known for leading the team who invented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language
US
UK
"John Warner Backus was famous in computer circles for inventing FORTRAN, as well as his formal language definition called the Backus-Naur form (BNF)."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Ken Thompson
US
UK
(born February 4, 1943) American co-inventor of the Unix operating system, as well as the now ubiquitous UTF-8 character set
US
UK
"Ken Thompson wrote many books including 1995's 'Plan 9 from Bell Labs'."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Linus Torvalds
US
UK
(born December 28, 1969) Finnish creator of the Linux operating system in 1991; his motivation was to create a Unix-like operating system for the x86 processor as an alternative to Windows, which he described as a "broken toy"
US
UK
"Linus Torvalds will go down in history as the father of Linux, the 'Unix for the masses'."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Margaret Hamilton
US
UK
(born August 17, 1936) American computer scientist, who wrote the guidance system for NASA's Apollo moon missions, and whose "priority display" innovation is credited with saving the mission from disaster
US
UK
"Among her other notable accomplishments, Margaret Hamilton is credited with inventing the term "software engineer"."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Rasmus Lerdorf
US
UK
(born November 22, 1968) Danish inventor of the PHP programming language, which was used to build some of the world's most popular websites, including: Facebook, WordPress, Moodle, and Wikipedia
US
UK
"Rasmus Lerdorf is known for inflaming object-oriented gurus by stating that procedural code is sometimes a better and faster approach for speed and scalability on the web."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Steve Jobs
US
UK
(February 24, 1955 - October 5, 2011) American co-founder and two-time CEO of Apple Computer, who helped popularize the home computer, famously calling it a "bicycle for the mind"
US
UK
"Steve Jobs was known for making high quality computers which were fashionable and extremely usable."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Steve Wozniak
US
UK
(born August 11, 1950) American co-founder of Apple Computer, and former fifth-grade math teacher, renowned for designing the Apple II, the first commercially successful home computer
US
UK
"Steve Wozniak is a well-respected figure in the history of computing because of his love of people and technology over money."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Tim Berners-Lee
US
UK
(born June 8, 1955) Englishman known as the father of the World Wide Web; he first proposed, and then built a global hypertext project based on URIs, HTTP and HTML; he later founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004
US
UK
"Tim Berners-Lee was knighted because of his remarkable invention, the World Wide Web."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Vannevar Bush
US
UK
(March 11, 1890 - June 28, 1974) American director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development; he came up with a concept called the 'memex' which was a spiritual forefather to hypertext way back in 1945
US
UK
"in 1949 Vannevar Bush wrote the important article 'As We May Think', which laid out the fundamental properties and vision for multimedia and hypertext."
Proper noun (person)
US
UK
Yukihiro Matsumoto
US
UK
(born April 14, 1965) Japanese creator of the Ruby programming language, considered to be one of the most elegant and object-oriented languages ever created
US
UK
"Yukihiro Matsumoto usually releases new versions of Ruby on Christmas Day and many programmers consider it "the gift that keeps on giving"."
Go to unit menu