Linus Torvalds was born in 1969 in Helsinki, Finland. He attended the University of Helsinki and graduated in 1996 with a degree in computer science. In the early 90s he discovered the Minix demo, a Unix based operating system, and was inspired to create his own. While attending the university,…
A graduate of Oxford University, England, Tim now holds the 3Com Founders chair at the Laboratory for Computer Science ( LCS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He directs the World Wide Web Consortium, an open forum of companies and organizations with the mission to lead the Web to its…
Kevin Mitnick was convicted of destroying data over a computer network and with stealing operator’s manuals from the telephone company in 1981. As his escapades continued, he became the first high profile hacker. Born in 1964 in Los Angeles, Mitnick first began hacking by changing friends’ grades on the high…
Lee Felsenstein is an electronic design engineer who was a participant in the early development of personal computers. Two of his designs (the Sol-20 and the Osborne-1) are on display in the Smithsonian, as is the story of the Homebrew Computer Club, which he chaired and where open architecture was…
Robert (Bob) Metcalfe was a pioneer in computing, creating the first theory about ethernet networking, which has become the industry standard. Born 1946 in Brooklyn, NY, he was sure he wanted to be an electrical engineer and go to MIT by age 10. He enrolled in 1964, leaving five years…
Larry Roberts was an integral part of the formation of ARPANet as one of it’s chief designers, and was also the first to connect two computers to one another via dedicated phone lines, proving that such connections were possible. After receiving a PhD from MIT , he heard the inspiring…
Born in 1915 in St.Louis, Missouri, J.C.R. Licklider (Lick) studied physics, chemistry, fine arts, and psychology, eventually earning undergraduate degrees and a Ph.D. He was a professor at Harvard University in the 40s, before moving on to MIT. There he was in charge of a human engineering group at Lincoln…
From Time Magazine’s Builders and Titans: As the eldest son of the president of IBM, Thomas Watson Jr. grew up tortured by self-doubt. He suffered bouts of depression and once burst into tears over the thought that his formidable father wanted him to join IBM and eventually run what was…
A bureaucracy and a factory are automated machines in Wiener’s view. The whole world — even the universe — could be seen as one big feedback system subject to the relentless advance of entropy, which subverts the exchange of messages that is essential to continued existence (Wiener, 1954). This concept…
Shannon was a graduate of the University of Michigan, being awarded a degree in mathematics and electrical engineering in 1936. He then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he obtained a Master’s Degree in electrical engineering and his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1940. Shannon wrote a Master’s thesis…