List of computer scientists
A computer scientist is a practitioner of computer science.
Famous computer scientists (in alphabetical order) include:
- Leonard Adleman
- Charles Babbage
- George Boole
- Gregory Chaitin
- Stephen Cook
- Ole-Johan Dahl
- Whitfield Diffie
- Edsger Dijkstra
- Kurt Gödel
- Martin Hellman
- Douglas Hofstadter
- Admiral Grace Hopper
- Alan Kay
- Donald Knuth
- Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov
- Butler W. Lampson
- Douglas Lenat
- Ada Lovelace
- Marvin Minsky
- Roger Needham
- John von Neumann
- Kristen Nygaard
- Ron Rivest
- Jeff Rulifson
- Adi Shamir
- Claude Shannon
- Alan Turing
- Maurice Wilkes
- Niklaus Wirth
- Stephen Wolfram
- Marcus Frean
Note: Some of these people pre-date the invention of the digital computer, but 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.
The highest honor in computer science is the Turing Award, the winners of whom are all major pioneers in the field.