READ Famous Computer Scientists from the United States

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List of notable or famous computer scientists from the United States, with bios and photos, including the top computer scientists born in the United States and even some popular computer scientists who immigrated to the United States. If you're trying to find out the names of famous American computer scientists then this list is the perfect resource for you. These computer scientists are among the most prominent in their field, and information about each well-known computer scientist from the United States is included when available.

List people range from Larry Page to Sergey Brin.

This historic computer scientists from the United States list can help answer the questions "Who are some American computer scientists of note?" and "Who are the most famous computer scientists from the United States?" These prominent computer scientists of the United States may or may not be currently alive, but what they all have in common is that they're all respected American computer scientists.

Use this list of renowned American computer scientists to discover some new computer scientists that you aren't familiar with. Don't forget to share this list by clicking one of the social media icons at the top or bottom of the page. (545 items)

1
Marissa Mayer is listed (or ranked) 1 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Marissa Mayer age 42 Marissa Ann Mayer is the current president and CEO of Yahoo!, a position she has held since July 2012. Previously, she was a long-time executive, usability leader, and key spokesperson for ...more

2
Larry Page is listed (or ranked) 2 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Larry Page age 45 Larry Page was Google's founding CEO and grew the company to more than 200 employees and profitability before moving into his role as president of products in April 2001. He continues to share ...more

3
Sergey Brin is listed (or ranked) 3 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Sergey Brin age 44 Sergey Brin, a native of Moscow, received a bachelor of science degree with honors in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park. He is currently on leave ...more

4
Steve Wozniak is listed (or ranked) 4 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Steve Wozniak age 67 Stephen Gary "Steve" Wozniak, known as "Woz", is an American inventor, electronics engineer, and computer programmer who co-founded Apple Computer with Steve Jobs and Ronald ...more

5
Grace Hopper is listed (or ranked) 5 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Grace Hopper Died at 86 (1906-1992) Grace Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. She was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer in 1944, and invented the first ...more

6
Gordon Moore is listed (or ranked) 6 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Gordon Moore age 89 Gordon Earle Moore is an American businessman and co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation and the author of Moore's law. As of January 2015, his net worth is $6.7 billion.

7
Charles Simonyi is listed (or ranked) 7 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Charles Simonyi age 69 Charles Simonyi, son of Károly Simonyi, is a Hungarian-American computer software executive who, as head of Microsoft's application software group, oversaw the creation of Microsoft's ...more

8
Donald Knuth is listed (or ranked) 8 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Donald Knuth age 80 Donald Ervin Knuth is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the author of the multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming. ...more

9
Bill Joy is listed (or ranked) 9 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Bill Joy age 63 William Nelson "Bill" Joy is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andreas von Bechtolsheim, and served as ...more

10
Lynn Conway is listed (or ranked) 10 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Lynn Conway age 80 Lynn Conway is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, inventor, and transgender activist. Conway is notable for a number of pioneering achievements, including the Mead & Conway ...more

11
James Gosling is listed (or ranked) 11 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
James Gosling age 62 James Arthur Gosling, OC is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the father of the Java programming language.

12
James H. Clark is listed (or ranked) 12 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
James H. Clark age 74 James Henry Clark is an American entrepreneur and computer scientist. He founded several notable Silicon Valley technology companies, including Silicon Graphics, Inc., Netscape Communications ...more

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13
Anthony James Barr is listed (or ranked) 13 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Anthony James Barr age 78 Anthony James Barr, aka Tony Barr or Jim Barr is an American programming language designer, software engineer, and inventor. Among his notable contributions are the Statistical Analysis System, ...more

14
Ken Thompson is listed (or ranked) 14 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Ken Thompson age 75 Kenneth "Ken" Thompson, commonly referred to as ken in hacker circles, is an American pioneer of computer science. Having worked at Bell Labs for most of his career, Thompson designed ...more

15
John McCarthy is listed (or ranked) 15 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
John McCarthy Died at 84 (1927-2011) John McCarthy was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. McCarthy was one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence. He coined the term "artificial ...more

16
Danny Hillis is listed (or ranked) 16 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Danny Hillis age 61 William Daniel "Danny" Hillis is an American inventor, engineer, mathematician, entrepreneur, and author. He co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a company that developed the ...more

17
Daniel Kottke is listed (or ranked) 17 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Daniel Kottke age 64 Daniel Kottke is an American computer engineer and one of the earliest employees of Apple Inc.

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18
John Backus is listed (or ranked) 18 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
John Backus Died at 83 (1924-2007) John Warner Backus was an American computer scientist. He directed the team that invented the first widely used high-level programming language and was the inventor of the Backus-Naur form, a ...more

19
Dennis Ritchie is listed (or ranked) 19 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Dennis Ritchie Died at 70 (1941-2011) Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was an American computer scientist. He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix operating system. Ritchie and Thompson ...more

20
Jim Gray is listed (or ranked) 20 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Jim Gray Died at 68 (1944-2012) James Nicholas "Jim" Gray was an American computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1998 "for seminal contributions to database and transaction processing research and ...more

21
Larry Wall is listed (or ranked) 21 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Larry Wall age 63 Larry Wall is a computer programmer and author, most widely known as the creator of the Perl programming language.

22
Marshall Kirk McKusick is listed (or ranked) 22 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Marshall Kirk McKusick age 64 Marshall Kirk McKusick is a computer scientist, known for his extensive work on BSD, from the 1980s to FreeBSD in the present day. He was president of the USENIX Association from 1990 to 1992 ...more

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23
Eric Allman is listed (or ranked) 23 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Eric Allman age 62 Eric Paul Allman is an American computer programmer who developed sendmail and its precursor delivermail in the late 1970s and early 1980s at UC Berkeley. In 1998, Allman co-founded the company ...more

24
Leonard Kleinrock is listed (or ranked) 24 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Leonard Kleinrock age 83 Leonard Kleinrock is an American engineer and computer scientist. A computer science professor at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, he made several important ...more

25
Bernard Marshall Gordon is listed (or ranked) 25 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Bernard Marshall Gordon age 91 Bernard Marshall Gordon, American inventor and philanthropist, is generally called "Bernie" rather than "Mr. Gordon" by associates and subordinates. Born not long before the ...more

26
Philippe Kahn is listed (or ranked) 26 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Philippe Kahn age 66 Philippe Kahn is a technology innovator and entrepreneur and founder of four technology companies: Fullpower Technologies, LightSurf Technologies, Starfish Software and Borland. Kahn is credited ...more

27
Bruce Bastian is listed (or ranked) 27 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Bruce Bastian age 70 Bruce Wayne Bastian is an American computer programmer, businessman, philanthropist and social activist. He co-founded the WordPerfect Software Company with Alan Ashton in 1978.

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28
Claude Shannon is listed (or ranked) 28 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Claude Shannon Died at 85 (1916-2001) Claude Elwood Shannon was an American mathematician, electronic engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory". Shannon is famous for having founded ...more

29
Ken Goldberg is listed (or ranked) 29 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Ken Goldberg age 57 Kenneth Y. Goldberg is an American artist, writer, inventor, and researcher in the field of robotics and automation. He is the craigslist Distinguished Professor of New Media and Professor of ...more

30
Stephen Wolfram is listed (or ranked) 30 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Stephen Wolfram age 58 Stephen Wolfram is a British computer scientist, entrepreneur and former physicist known for his contributions to theoretical physics; his pioneering work on knowledge-based programming; as the ...more

31
Robert Metcalfe is listed (or ranked) 31 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Robert Metcalfe age 72 Robert Melancton "Bob" Metcalfe is an electrical engineer from the United States who co-invented Ethernet, founded 3Com and formulated Metcalfe's Law. As of January 2006, he is a ...more

32
David Chaum is listed (or ranked) 32 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
David Chaum age 63 David Lee Chaum is the inventor of many cryptographic protocols, as well as ecash and DigiCash. His 1981 paper, "Untraceable Electronic Mail, Return Addresses, and Digital Pseudonyms", ...more

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33
Michael Stonebraker is listed (or ranked) 33 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Michael Stonebraker age 74 Dr. Stonebraker has been a pioneer of database research and technology for more than a quarter of a century. He was the main architect of the INGRES relational DBMS, and the object-relational ...more

34
Julian Lombardi is listed (or ranked) 34 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Julian Lombardi age 61 Julian Lombardi is an American inventor, author, educator, and computer scientist known for his work with socio-computational systems, scalable virtual world technologies, and in the design and ...more

35
Daniel M. Lewin is listed (or ranked) 35 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Daniel M. Lewin Died at 31 (1970-2001) Daniel "Danny" Mark Lewin was an American-Israeli mathematician and entrepreneur who co-founded internet company Akamai Technologies. He died in the September 11 attacks. A passenger ...more

36
Anu Garg is listed (or ranked) 36 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Anu Garg age 50 Anu Garg is an American author and speaker. He is also founder of Wordsmith.org, an online community comprising word lovers from an estimated 200 countries. His books explore the joy of words. ...more

37
Carver Mead is listed (or ranked) 37 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Carver Mead age 83 Carver Andress Mead is a US scientist and engineer. He currently holds the position of Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of ...more

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38
Carl Sassenrath is listed (or ranked) 38 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Carl Sassenrath age 61 Carl Sassenrath is an architect of operating systems and computer languages. He brought multitasking to personal computers in 1985 with the creation of the Amiga Computer operating system ...more

39
Marvin Minsky is listed (or ranked) 39 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Marvin Minsky age 90 Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence, co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts ...more

40
Ivan Sutherland is listed (or ranked) 40 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Ivan Sutherland age 79 Ivan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subject at the University ...more

41
Guy Steele is listed (or ranked) 41 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Guy Steele age 63 Guy Lewis Steele Jr, also known as "The Great Quux", and GLS, is an American computer scientist who has played an important role in designing and documenting several computer

42
Robert Tarjan is listed (or ranked) 42 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Robert Tarjan age 69 Robert Endre Tarjan is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is the discoverer of several graph algorithms, including Tarjan's off-line least common ancestors algorithm, and ...more

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43
Eric Paulos is listed (or ranked) 43 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Eric Paulos Eric Paulos is an American computer scientist, artist, and inventor, best known for his early work on internet robotic teleoperation and is considered a founder of the field of Urban Computing. ...more

44
Patrick Tufts is listed (or ranked) 44 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Patrick Tufts Patrick Tufts is a computer scientist and inventor. He created Alexa Internet's collaborative filter for creating related web site recommendations and later, one of Amazon.com's most successful ...more

45
Vint Cerf is listed (or ranked) 45 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Vint Cerf age 74 Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. He is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies and applications on the Internet and other platforms for ...more

46
Danielle Bunten Berry is listed (or ranked) 46 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Danielle Bunten Berry Died at 49 (1949-1998) Danielle Bunten Berry, born Daniel Paul Bunten, and also known as Dan Bunten, was an American game designer and programmer, known for the 1983 game M.U.L.E., and 1984's The Seven Cities of Gold. ...more

47
Sean Egan is listed (or ranked) 47 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Sean Egan age 35 Sean Egan is a software engineer at Google, where he worked on Google Talk and is currently working on Google Maps. He is the former project leader of Pidgin, a popular instant messaging client. ...more

48
Ken Jennings is listed (or ranked) 48 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Ken Jennings age 43 Kenneth Wayne "Ken" Jennings III is an American game show contestant and author. Jennings holds the record for the longest winning streak on the U.S. syndicated game show Jeopardy! and ...more

49
Juris Hartmanis is listed (or ranked) 49 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Juris Hartmanis age 89 Juris Hartmanis is a prominent computer scientist and computational theorist who, with Richard E. Stearns, received the 1993 ACM Turing Award "in recognition of their seminal paper which ...more

50
Andrew Ng is listed (or ranked) 50 on the list Famous Computer Scientists from the United States
Andrew Ng age 42 Andrew Y. Ng is Chief Scientist at Baidu Research in Silicon Valley. In addition, he is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical Engineering ...more