Famous people of computer science

Computer science boasts of a lot of branches and a lot of eminent persons in each branch. So it is really difficult to choose only a few people. Looking for the “most famous” and “most eminent” scientists, I came across the web site page with the title “Famous Computer Scientists. Who shall we put on the postage stamps?” There was a voting organized at this site. Visitors voted for the person worth to their mind being the most prominent in the history of computer science. So, there are the “top 5” of computer men of science:

Alan Mathison Turing, (June 23^rd, 1912 – June 7^th, 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer. Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science.

With the Turing test, Turing made a significant and characteristically provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. He provided an influential formalization of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, formulating the now widely accepted "Turing" version of the Church–Turing thesis, namely that any practical computing model has either the equivalent or a subset of the capabilities of a Turing machine.

John von Neumann (Neumann János) (December 28^th, 1903 – February 8^th, 1957) was a Hungarian-born mathematician and polymath who made contributions to quantum physics, functional analysis, set theory, economics, computer science, topology, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), statistics and many other mathematical fields as one of world history's outstanding mathematicians. Most notably, von Neumann was a pioneer of the modern digital computer and the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics (von Neumann algebra), a member of the Manhattan Project and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and creator of game theory and the concept of cellular automata.

Donald Ervin Knuth, (born January 10^th, 1938) is a renowned computer scientist and professor emeritus at Stanford University. Knuth is best known as the author of the multi-volume The Art of Computer Programming, one of the most highly respected references in the computer science field. He practically created the field of rigorous analysis of algorithms, and made many seminal contributions to several branches of theoretical computer science. He also pioneered the concept of literate programming.

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (Rotterdam, May 11th, 1930 – Nuenen, August 6^th, 2002) was a Dutch computer scientist. He received the 1972 A.M. Turing Award for fundamental contributions in the area of programming languages, and was the Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Sciences at The University of Texas from 1984 until his death in 2002.

Dijkstra was known for his essays on programming; he was the first to make the claim that programming is so inherently difficult and complex that programmers need to harness every trick and abstraction possible in hopes of managing the complexity of it successfully.

Charles Babbage (26^th December 1791 – 18^th October 1871) was an English mathematician, analytical philosopher, mechanical engineer and (proto-) computer scientist who originated the idea of a programmable computer. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. In 1991, working from Babbage's original plans, a difference engine was completed, and functioned perfectly. It was built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, indicating that Babbage's machine would have worked. Nine years later, the Science Museum completed the printer which Babbage had designed for the difference engine; it featured astonishing complexity for a 19th century device.

Among Ukrainian scientists whose contributions to the field of computing are highly assessed we should mention first of all Victor Glushkov who was the founder of information technology in the Soviet Union (and specifically in Ukraine), and one of the founders of Cybernetics.

He contributed much to the theory of automata. He and his followers (Kapitonova, Letichevskiy and others) successfully applied that theory to enhance construction of computers. His book "Synthesis of Digital Automata" became well known. For that work he was awarded the Lenin State Prize in 1964 and was elected as a Member of the Academy of Science of USSR.

He greatly influenced many other fields of theoretical computer science (including the theory of programming and artificial intelligence). He published nearly 800 works.

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