Famous Personalities in the field ofInformation Technology

Submitted by: Nagesh AgrawalSubmitted to: Mrs. Usha Mam

For every world-famous name with a world famous fortune, such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell, there are hundreds of other individuals who have moved the IT industry and its technology inexorably forward.

Fame and fortune has rarely been their immediate spur. A passion for changing the world through technology is the hallmark of the IT Greats. Sometimes they have changed technology, sometimes they have transformed the way technology is marketed or radically altered the way IT is perceived by society.

Some have been involved in great leaps forward, some have made incremental changes that have stood the test of time.

Whatever the case, our industry is truly one where we all stand on the shoulders of giants, and we are proud to pay tribute to some of them in the results of our IT Greats poll.

Steve Jobs, the co-founder and chief executive of Apple Computer, topped the Computer Weekly 40th anniversary poll due to the devoted following he has generated through his pioneering work in personal computing and product design.

Steve Jobs

Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners Lee is the father of the web and champion of IT freedom. He made the imaginative leap to combine the internet with the hypertext concept, and the worldwide web was born.

In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It comprised various companies willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the web.

James Gosling

Bill Gates

As joint founder of the world’s biggest software company, Microsoft, Bill Gates’s approach to technology and business was instrumental in making technology available to the masses. Gates stood down as the CEO of Microsoft in 2000 to focus on software development.

In 1984, Gosling joined Sun Microsystems where he is currently the chief technology officer in the developer product group.

In the early 1990s, Gosling initiated and led a project code-named Green that eventually became Java. Green aimed to develop software that would run on a variety of computing devices without having to be customized for each one.

Linus Torvalds

Richard Stallman

As the creator of the Linux operating system, Linus Torvalds has been a driving force behind the whole open source movement, which represents an ever increasing challenge to proprietary software.

Torvalds remains the ultimate authority on what new code is incorporated into the Linux kernel.

Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU Project, an initiative to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software. Stallman has written several popular tools, created the GNU license and campaigns against software patents.

Arthur Clarke

Ted Codd

2001: A Space Odyssey writer Arthur Clarke has consistently been ahead of his time in predicting how technology will change the world. Most notably, in 1945 he suggested that geostationary satellites would make ideal telecoms relays.

Ted Codd created 12 rules on which every relational database is built - an essential ingredient for building business computer systems.

Steve Shirley

Martha Lane Fox

Steve Shirley was an early champion of women in IT. She founded the company now known as Xansa, pioneered new work practices and in doing so, created new opportunities for women in technology.

With Brent Hoberman, Martha Lane Fox created Lastminute.com in 1998, and as "the face" of Lastminute raised the profile of e-commerce ever higher in the public consciousness.

Ken Olsen

Clive Sinclair

Ken Olsen is the founder of Dec, who invented the minicomputer.

Clive Sinclair is the founder of Sinclair electronics, Sinclair line of computers.

He is also a home computer visionary.

Vinton Cerf

Bill Joy

Vinton Cerf is one of the internet's founding fathers. He is also one of the fathers of the Internet and "Chief Internet Evangelist" at Google.

Bill Joy is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems.

Steve Wozniak

Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison is a Jewish billionaire and the founder of the technology company Oracle.

Steve Wozniak is the Apple co-founder.

Dennis Ritchie

Donald Davies

Dennis Ritchie is the inventor of the C programming language.

Donald Davies is the co-inventor of packet switching.

Ken Thompson

Grace Hopper

Ken Thompson is the co-creator of Unix.

Grace Hopper is a COBOL pioneer.

Paul Allen

Steve Ballmer

Paul Allen is the Microsoft Co-founder and he is a wealthy Internet Entrepreneur.

Steve Ballmer is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft Corporation.

Jeff Bezos

Sergey Brin

Jeff Bezos is the billionaire Amazon.com founder and Internet Entrepreneur.

Sergey Brin is the Google search engine co-founder and billionaire Internet Entrepreneur.

Mark Cuban

Steve Case

Steve Case is the AOL (America Online) founder. He is also an Internet Entrepreneur.

Mark Cuban is a billionaire Internet Entrepreneur and NBA basketball team owner.

Michael Dell

David Filo

Michael Dell is the founder of Dell Computers and he is a wealthy American billionaire .

David Filo is an American billionaire co-founder of the Yahoo! search engine and internet portal with Jerry Yang.

Andy Grove

Takafumi Horie

Andy Grove is one of the founding members of the Intel Corporation.

Takafumi Horie is a flamboyant young Japanese Internet Entrepreneur of the Livedoor Internet Company.

Craig Newmark

Pierre Omidyar

Craig Newmark is a famous American Internet Entrepreneur and founder of the free classifieds website Craigslist.

Pierre Omidyar is the eBay founder and billionaire Internet Entrepreneur.

Larry Page

Bob Parsons

Larry Page is a billionaire co-founder of the successful Google search engine.

Bob Parsons is the Go Daddy domain name registrar founder and he is also an Internet Entrepreneur.

Eric Schmidt

Meg Whitman

Eric Schmidt is a Technologist and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Google company.

Meg Whitman is the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the online auction website eBay.

Jerry Yang

Mark Zuckerberg

Jerry Yang is a billionaire Yahoo! Incorporated co-founder.

Mark Zuckerberg is the famous American billionaire founder of the social networking site Facebook.

H. Edward Roberts

Chuck Peddle

H. Edward Roberts is the creator of the first popular personal computer - MITS Altair 8800.

Chuck Peddle is the designer of the 6502 CPU and the Commodore PET 2001 computer.

Lee Felsenstein

Jack Tramiel

Lee Felsenstein is the designer of the early successful computers - Sol-20, Osborne 1.

Jack Tramiel is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Commodore computer company.

Gary Kildall

Andrew Kay

Gary Kildall created the first popular computer operating system - CP/M.

Andrew Kay is the inventor of the DMM, founder of Kaypro, which created the Kaypro line of portable computers.

Azim Premji

Software tycoon Mr. Azim Premji is India’s Bill Gates and one of the Richest Indian for the past several years.

He is the Founder and Chairman of Wipro Technologies – one of the largest software companies in India.

N. R. Naraya-na Murthy

N.R. Narayana Murthy is the GURU of Information Technology.

He is the co-founder of Infosys Technologies and  is one of the most well known personalities in the Indian IT sector.

Sabeer Bhatia

Sabeer Bhatia was the co-founder of Hotmail.com – the world’s first webmail service. He has announced three more ventures – Arzoo, Instacoll and SabseBol – after Hotmail.

Gary Morolo

Gary Morolo became the CEO of the company which he and Reuel Khoza founded, called Co-ordinated Marketing & Management (Pty) Ltd. in 1986. He also became the Non-Executive Chairman of two listed investee companies, Datacentrix Holdings Limited and IST Group Limited, at their listing in the technology sector of the JSE Limited in1998.

Vinny Lingham

Vinny Lingham is a South African Internet entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Yola, Inc. (formerly known as SynthaSite), a San Francisco-based Web 2.0 start-up that provides free website building, publishing and hosting services. He is also the co-founder of SiliconCape.com, an NGO based in South Africa that aims to turn Cape Town into a technology hub. Lingham was previously the founder and CEO of the global search marketing firm incuBeta and its subsidiary Clicks2Customers.

Rob Sussman

Rob Sussman is a joint Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and joint founder of Integr8 Group.