Computer scientist in the context of Niklaus Wirth

Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Included broadly in the sciences, computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to applied disciplines (including the design and implementation of hardware and software). An expert in the field is known as a computer scientist.

Algorithms and data structures are central to computer science.The theory of computation concerns abstract models of computation and general classes of problems that can be solved using them. The fields of cryptography and computer security involve studying the means for secure communication and preventing security vulnerabilities. Computer graphics and computational geometry address the generation of images. Programming language theory considers different ways to describe computational processes, and database theory concerns the management of repositories of data. Human–computer interaction investigates the interfaces through which humans and computers interact, and software engineering focuses on the design and principles behind developing software. Areas such as operating systems, networks and embedded systems investigate the principles and design behind complex systems. Computer architecture describes the construction of computer components and computer-operated equipment. Artificial intelligence and machine learning aim to synthesize goal-orientated processes such as problem-solving, decision-making, environmental adaptation, planning and learning found in humans and animals. Within artificial intelligence, computer vision aims to understand and process image and video data, while natural language processing aims to understand and process textual and linguistic data.

Amir Pnueli (Hebrew: אמיר פנואלי; April 22, 1941 – November 2, 2009) was an Israeli computer scientist and the 1996 Turing Award recipient.

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (/ˈdaɪkstrə/ DYKE-strə; Dutch: [ˈɛtsxər ˈʋibə ˈdɛikstraː] ; 11 May 1930 – 6 August 2002) was a Dutch computer scientist, programmer, mathematician, and science essayist.

Born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Dijkstra studied mathematics and physics and then theoretical physics at the University of Leiden. Adriaan van Wijngaarden offered him a job as the first computer programmer in the Netherlands at the Mathematical Centre in Amsterdam, where he worked from 1952 until 1962. He formulated and solved the shortest path problem in 1956, and in 1960 developed the first compiler for the programming language ALGOL 60 in conjunction with colleague Jaap A. Zonneveld. In 1962 he moved to Eindhoven, and later to Nuenen, where he became a professor in the Mathematics Department at the Technische Hogeschool Eindhoven. In the late 1960s he built the THE multiprogramming system, which influenced the designs of subsequent systems through its use of software-based paged virtual memory. Dijkstra joined Burroughs Corporation as its sole research fellow in August 1973. The Burroughs years saw him at his most prolific in output of research articles. He wrote nearly 500 documents in the "EWD" series, most of them technical reports, for private circulation within a select group.

Martin David Davis (March 8, 1928 – January 1, 2023) was an American mathematician and computer scientist who contributed to the fields of computability theory and mathematical logic. His work on Hilbert's tenth problem led to the MRDP theorem. He also advanced the Post–Turing model and co-developed the Davis–Putnam–Logemann–Loveland (DPLL) algorithm, which is foundational for Boolean satisfiability solvers.

Davis won the Leroy P. Steele Prize, the Chauvenet Prize (with Reuben Hersh), and the Lester R. Ford Award. He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

John von Neumann (/vɒn ˈnɔɪmən/ von NOY-mən; Hungarian: Neumann János Lajos [ˈnɒjmɒn ˈjaːnoʃ ˈlɒjoʃ]; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, integrating pure and applied sciences and making major contributions to many fields, including mathematics, physics, economics, computing, and statistics. He was a pioneer in building the mathematical framework of quantum physics, in the development of functional analysis, and in game theory, introducing or codifying concepts including cellular automata, the universal constructor and the digital computer. His analysis of the structure of self-replication preceded the discovery of the structure of DNA.

During World War II, von Neumann worked on the Manhattan Project. He developed the mathematical models behind the explosive lenses used in the implosion-type nuclear weapon. Before and after the war, he consulted for many organizations including the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At the peak of his influence in the 1950s, he chaired a number of Defense Department committees including the Strategic Missile Evaluation Committee and the ICBM Scientific Advisory Committee. He was also a member of the influential Atomic Energy Commission in charge of all atomic energy development in the country. He played a key role alongside Bernard Schriever and Trevor Gardner in the design and development of the United States' first ICBM programs. At that time he was considered the nation's foremost expert on nuclear weaponry and the leading defense scientist at the U.S. Department of Defense.

Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (/ˈlɪklaɪdər/; March 11, 1915 – June 26, 1990), known simply as J. C. R. or "Lick", was an American psychologist and computer scientist who is considered to be among the most prominent figures in computer science development and general computing history.

He is particularly remembered for being one of the first to foresee modern-style interactive computing and its application to all manner of activities; and also as an Internet pioneer with an early vision of a worldwide computer network long before it was built. He did much to initiate this by funding research that led to significant advances in computing technology, including today's canonical graphical user interface, and the ARPANET, which is the direct predecessor of the Internet.

Donald Watts Davies, CBE FRS (7 June 1924 – 28 May 2000) was a British computer scientist and Internet pioneer who was employed at the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL).

During 1965-67 he invented modern data communications, including packet switching, high-speed routers, layered communication protocols, hierarchical computer networks and the essence of the end-to-end principle, concepts that are used today in computer networks worldwide. He envisioned, in 1966, that there would be a "single network" for data and telephone communications. Davies proposed and studied a commercial national data network in the United Kingdom and designed and built the first implementation of packet switching in the local-area NPL network in 1966-69 to demonstrate the technology. Many of the wide-area packet-switched networks built in the late 1960s and 1970s were similar "in nearly all respects" to his original 1965 design. Davies' work influenced the ARPANET in the United States and the CYCLADES project in France, and was key to the development of the data communications technology used in Internet, which is a network of networks.

Haskell Brooks Curry (/ˈhæskəl/ HAS-kəl; September 12, 1900 – September 1, 1982) was an American mathematician, logician and computer scientist. Curry is best known for his work in combinatory logic, whose initial concept is based on a paper by Moses Schönfinkel, for which Curry did much of the development. Curry is also known for Curry's paradox and the Curry–Howard correspondence. Named for him are three programming languages: Haskell, Brook, and Curry, and the concept of currying, a method to transform functions, used in mathematics and computer science.

A Request for Comments (RFC) is a publication in a series from the principal technical development and standards-setting bodies for the Internet, most prominently the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). An RFC is authored by individuals or groups of engineers and computer scientists in the form of a memorandum describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems. It is submitted either for peer review or to convey new concepts, information, or, occasionally, engineering humor.

The IETF adopts some of the proposals published as RFCs as Internet Standards. However, many RFCs are informational or experimental in nature and are not standards. The RFC system was invented by Steve Crocker in 1969 to help record unofficial notes on the development of ARPANET. RFCs have since become official documents of Internet specifications, communications protocols, procedures, and events. According to Crocker, the documents "shape the Internet's inner workings and have played a significant role in its success," but are not widely known outside the community.

Christopher S. Strachey (/ˈstreɪtʃi/; 16 November 1916 – 18 May 1975) was a British computer scientist. He was one of the founders of denotational semantics, and a pioneer in programming language design and computer time-sharing. He has also been credited as possibly the first developer of a video game and for coining terms such as polymorphism and referential transparency that are still widely used by developers. He was a member of the Strachey family, prominent in government, arts, administration, and academia.

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, HTML, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow at the University of Oxford and a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Berners-Lee proposed an information management system on 12 March 1989 and implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in mid-November. He devised and implemented the first Web browser and Web server and helped foster the Web's subsequent development. He is the founder and emeritus director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the Web. He co-founded (with Rosemary Leith) the World Wide Web Foundation. In 2009, he was elected Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences.

Allan Alcorn (born January 1, 1948) is an American computer scientist and video game designer. He is best known for creating Pong, one of the first video games. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.

Stephen Russell (born 1937), also nicknamed "Slug", is an American computer scientist most famous for creating Spacewar!, well known for being the first widely distributed video game.

Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist, cryptographer and inventor known as the "father of information theory" and the man who laid the foundations of the Information Age.

Shannon was the first to describe the use of Boolean algebra—essential to all digital electronic circuits—and helped found the field of artificial intelligence. Roboticist Rodney Brooks declared Shannon the 20th century engineer who contributed the most to 21st century technologies, and mathematician Solomon W. Golomb described his intellectual achievement as "one of the greatest of the twentieth century".

System F (also polymorphic lambda calculus or second-order lambda calculus) is a typed lambda calculus that introduces, to simply typed lambda calculus, a mechanism of universal quantification over types. System F formalizes parametric polymorphism in programming languages, thus forming a theoretical basis for languages such as Haskell and ML. It was discovered independently by logician Jean-Yves Girard (1972) and computer scientist John C. Reynolds.

Whereas simply typed lambda calculus has variables ranging over terms, and binders for them, System F additionally has variables ranging over types, and binders for them. As an example, the fact that the identity function can have any type of the form A → A would be formalized in System F as the statement

Alonzo Church (June 14, 1903 – August 11, 1995) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer science. He is best known for the lambda calculus, the Church–Turing thesis, proving the unsolvability of the Entscheidungsproblem ("decision problem"), the Frege–Church ontology, and the Church–Rosser theorem. Alongside his doctoral student Alan Turing, Church is considered one of the founders of computer science.

Guy Lewis Steele Jr. (/stiːl/; born October 2, 1954) is an American computer scientist who has played an important role in designing and documenting several computer programming languages and technical standards.