This is a list of computer scientists, people who do work in computer science, in particular researchers and authors.
Some persons notable as programmers are included here because they work in research as well as program. A few of these people pre-date the invention of the digital computer; they are now regarded as computer scientists because their work can be seen as leading to the invention of the computer. Others are mathematicians whose work falls within what would now be called theoretical computer science, such as complexity theory and algorithmic information theory.
A
Wil van der Aalst – business process management, process mining, Petri nets Scott Aaronson – quantum computing and complexity theory Rediet Abebe – algorithms, artificial intelligence Hal Abelson – intersection of computing and teaching Serge Abiteboul – database theory Samson Abramsky – game semantics Leonard Adleman – RSA, DNA computing Manindra Agrawal – polynomial-time primality testing Luis von Ahn – human-based computation Alfred Aho – compilers book, the 'a' in AWK Frances E. Allen – compiler optimization Gene Amdahl – supercomputer developer, Amdahl Corporation founder David P. Anderson – volunteer computing Lisa Anthony – natural user interfaces Andrew Appel – compiler of text books Cecilia R. Aragon – invented treap, human-centered data science Bruce Arden – programming language compilers (GAT, Michigan Algorithm Decoder (MAD)), virtual memory architecture, Michigan Terminal System (MTS) Kevin Ashton – pioneered and named The Internet of Things at M.I.T. Sanjeev Arora – PCP theorem Winifred "Tim" Alice Asprey – established the computer science curriculum at Vassar College John Vincent Atanasoff – computer pioneer, creator of Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC) Shakuntala Atre – database theory Lennart Augustsson – languages (Lazy ML, Cayenne), compilers (HBC Haskell, parallel Haskell front end, Bluespec SystemVerilog early), LPMud pioneer, NetBSD device drivers
B
Charles Babbage (1791–1871) – invented first mechanical computer called the supreme mathematician Charles Bachman – American computer scientist, known for Integrated Data Store Roland Carl Backhouse – mathematics of computer program construction, algorithmic problem solving, ALGOL IFIP WG 2.1 member John Backus – Fortran, Backus–Naur form, first complete compiler David F. Bacon – programming languages, garbage collection David Bader Victor Bahl Fatmah Baothman – Saudi Arabian AI researcher Anthony James Barr – SAS, former Statistical Analysis System Jean Bartik (1924–2011) – one of the first computer programmers, on ENIAC (1946), one of the first vacuum tube computers, back when programming involved using cables, dials, and switches to physically rewire a machine; worked with John Mauchly toward BINAC (1949), EDVAC (1949), UNIVAC (1951) to develop early stored program computers Andrew Barto Friedrich L. Bauer – stack (data structure), Sequential Formula Translation, ALGOL, software engineering, Bauer–Fike theorem Rudolf Bayer – B-tree Gordon Bell (1934–2024) – computer designer DEC VAX, author: Computer Structures Steven M. Bellovin – network security Yoshua Bengio – artificial intelligence, deep learning Cecilia Berdichevsky (1925–2010) – pioneering Argentinian computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee – World Wide Web Daniel J. Bernstein – qmail, software as protected speech Peter Bernus Abhay Bhushan Dines Bjørner – Vienna Development Method (VDM), RAISE Gerrit Blaauw – one of main designers of IBM System/360 computer line Sue Black David Blei Dorothy Blum – National Security Agency Lenore Blum – complexity Manuel Blum – cryptography Barry Boehm – software engineering economics, spiral development Amber S. Boehnlein Corrado Böhm – author of the structured program theorem Kurt Bollacker Jeff Bonwick – invented slab allocation and ZFS Grady Booch – Unified Modeling Language, Object Management Group George Boole – Boolean logic Andrew Booth – developed the first rotating drum storage device Kathleen Booth – developed the first assembly language Anita Borg (1949–2003) – American computer scientist, founder of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology Alan H. Borning – human–computer interaction, object-oriented programming, constraint programming, programming languages, ThingLab Bert Bos – Cascading Style Sheets Mikhail Botvinnik – World Chess Champion, computer scientist, electrical engineer, pioneered early expert system AI and computer chess Jonathan Bowen – Z notation, formal methods Stephen R. Bourne – Bourne shell, portable ALGOL 68C compiler Harry Bouwman (born 1953) – Dutch Information systems researcher, professor at Åbo Akademi University Robert S. Boyer – string searching, ACL2 theorem prover Karlheinz Brandenburg – Main mp3 contributor Gilles Brassard – BB84 protocol and quantum cryptography pioneer Lawrence M. Breed – implementation of Iverson Notation (APL), co-developed APL\360, Scientific Time Sharing Corporation cofounder Jack E. Bresenham – early computer-graphics contributions, including Bresenham's algorithm Sergey Brin – co-founder of Google David J. Brown – unified memory architecture, binary compatibility Per Brinch Hansen (surname "Brinch Hansen") – RC 4000 multiprogramming system, operating system kernels, microkernels, monitors, concurrent programming, Concurrent Pascal, distributed computing & processes, parallel computing Sjaak Brinkkemper – methodology of product software development Fred Brooks – IBM System/360, OS/360, The Mythical Man-Month, No Silver Bullet Rod Brooks Margaret Burnett – visual programming languages, end-user software engineering, and gender-inclusive software Rod Burstall – languages COWSEL (renamed POP-1), POP-2, NPL, Hope; ACM SIGPLAN 2009 PL Achievement Award Michael Butler – Event-B
C Pino Caballero Gil – cryptography Tracy Camp – wireless computing Martin Campbell-Kelly – history of computing Rosemary Candlin Rod Canion – cofounder of Compaq Computer Corporation Bryan Cantrill – invented DTrace Luca Cardelli John Carmack – codeveloped Doom Michael Caspersen – programming methodology, education in OO programming, leadership in developing informatics education Edwin Catmull – computer graphics Vint Cerf – Internet, TCP/IP Gregory Chaitin Robert Cailliau – Belgian computer scientist Zhou Chaochen – duration calculus Peter Chen – entity-relationship model, data modeling, conceptual model Leonardo Chiariglione – founder of MPEG Tracy Chou – computer scientist and activist Alonzo Church – mathematics of combinators, lambda calculus Alberto Ciaramella – speech recognition, patent informatics Edmund M. Clarke – model checking John Cocke – reduced instruction set computer (RISC) Edgar F. Codd (1923–2003) – formulated the database relational model Jacques Cohen – computer science professor Ian Coldwater – computer security Simon Colton – computational creativity Alain Colmerauer – Prolog Douglas Comer – Xinu Paul Justin Compton – Ripple-down rules Richard W. Conway – CORC, CUPL, and PL/C languages and dialects; programming textbooks Stephen Cook – NP-completeness James Cooley – Fast Fourier transform (FFT) Steven Anson Coons – conic section analyses, Bézier surface patches (includes Coons patch), The Little Red Book (1967), computer graphics Danese Cooper – open-source software Fernando J. Corbató – Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), Multics Gordon Cormack – co-invented dynamic Markov compression Kit Cosper – open-source software Patrick Cousot – abstract interpretation Ingemar Cox – digital watermarking Damien Coyle – computational neuroscience, neuroimaging, neurotechnology, and brain–computer interface Seymour Cray – Cray Research, supercomputer Nello Cristianini – machine learning, pattern analysis, artificial intelligence Jon Crowcroft – networking W. Bruce Croft Glen Culler – interactive computing, computer graphics, high performance computing Haskell Curry
D Luigi Dadda – designer of the Dadda multiplier Ole-Johan Dahl – Simula, object-oriented programming Ryan Dahl – founder of node.js project Andries van Dam – computer graphics, hypertext Samir Das – Wireless Networks, Mobile Computing, Vehicular ad hoc network, Sensor Networks, Mesh networking, Wireless ad hoc network Neil Daswani – computer security, co-founder and co-director of Stanford Advanced Computer Security Program, co-founder of Dasient (acquired by Twitter), former chief information security of LifeLock and Symantec's Consumer Business Unit Christopher J. Date – proponent of database relational model Terry A. Davis – creator of TempleOS Jeff Dean – Bigtable, MapReduce, Spanner of Google Erik Demaine – computational origami Tom DeMarco Richard DeMillo – computer security, software engineering, educational technology Dorothy E. Denning – computer security Peter J. Denning – identified the use of an operating system's working set and balance set, President of ACM Michael Dertouzos – Director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) from 1974 to 2001 Alexander Dewdney Robert Dewar – IFIP WG 2.1 member, ALGOL 68, chairperson; AdaCore cofounder, president, CEO Vinod Dham – P5 Pentium processor Jan Dietz (born 1945) (decay constant) – information systems theory and Design & Engineering Methodology for Organizations Whitfield Diffie (born 1944) (linear response function) – public key cryptography, Diffie–Hellman key exchange Edsger W. Dijkstra – algorithms, Dijkstra's algorithm, Go To Statement Considered Harmful, semaphore (programming), IFIP WG 2.1 member Matthew Dillon – DragonFly BSD with LWKT, vkernel OS-level virtualisation, file systems: HAMMER1, HAMMER2 Alan Dix – wrote important university level textbook on human–computer interaction Jack Dongarra – linear algebra high performance computing (HCI) Marco Dorigo – ant colony optimization Paul Dourish – human computer interaction Charles Stark Draper (1901–1987) – designer of Apollo Guidance Computer, "father of inertial navigation", MIT professor Susan Dumais – information retrieval Adam Dunkels – Contiki, lwIP, uIP, protothreads Jon Michael Dunn – founding dean of Indiana University School of Informatics, information based logics especially relevance logic Schahram Dustdar – Distributed Systems, TU Wien, Austria
E Peter Eades – graph drawing Annie Easley Wim Ebbinkhuijsen – COBOL John Presper Eckert – ENIAC Alan Edelman – Edelman's Law, stochastic operator, Interactive Supercomputing, Julia (programming language) cocreator, high performance computing, numerical computing Brendan Eich – JavaScript, Mozilla Philip Emeagwali – supercomputing E. Allen Emerson – model checking Douglas Engelbart – tiled windows, hypertext, computer mouse Barbara Engelhardt – latent variable models, genomics, quantitative trait locus (QTL) David Eppstein Andrey Ershov – languages ALPHA, Rapira; first Soviet time-sharing system AIST-0, electronic publishing system RUBIN, multiprocessing workstation MRAMOR, IFIP WG 2.1 member, Aesthetics and the Human Factor in Programming Don Estridge (1937–1985) – led development of original IBM Personal Computer (PC); known as "father of the IBM PC" Oren Etzioni – MetaCrawler, Netbot Christopher Riche Evans David C. Evans – computer graphics Shimon Even
F Scott Fahlman Edward Feigenbaum – intelligence Edward Felten – computer security Tim Finin Raphael Finkel Donald Firesmith Gary William Flake Tommy Flowers – Colossus computer Robert Floyd – NP-completeness Sally Floyd – Internet congestion control Lawrence J. Fogel – evolutionary programming James D. Foley Ken Forbus L. R. Ford, Jr. Lance Fortnow Martin Fowler Robert France Herbert W. Franke Edward Fredkin Yoav Freund Daniel P. Friedman Charlotte Froese Fischer – computational theoretical physics Nick Frosst Ping Fu Xiaoming Fu