1. Basics:

Claude Shannon (Information theory)
Noam Chomsky (Formal languages)
Lotfi Zadeh (Fuzzy logic)
Norbert Wiener (Cybernetics

2. Transistor: 

William Shockley, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain (Germanium transistor)
Gordon Teal (Silicon transistor)

3. First Generation:

Maurice Wilkes (EDSAC)
Tom Kilburn (Manchester "Baby")
Sergej Lebedev (USSR computers)
Jay Forrester (MIT computers)

4. Germany:

Heinz Nixdorf (NCAG)
Heinz Billing (First German electronic computer)
Joachim Lehmann (East German computers)
Friedrich Bauer (Stack principle, PERM etc.)

5. Mainframes:

Fred Brooks (IBM 360)
Gene Amdahl (Amdahl computers)
Heinz Zemanek (Mailuefterl computer)
Fritz-Rudolf Güntsch (influential scholar & administrator)

6. Mini Computer:

Ken Olsen, Gordon Bell (DEC)
An Wang (Wang)
Otto Müller, Ilse Müller (Nixdorf, CTM)

7. Computer Chip:

Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce (Fairchild, Intel)
Jack Kilby (TI IC)

8. Mikroprocessor:

Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin (Intel 4004)
Jerry Sanders (AMD)
James Clark (SGI processor)
Chuck Peddle (MOS Technologies)

9. Micro Computer:

Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak (Apple)
Ed Roberts (Altair)
François Gernelle (Micral)

10. Personal Computer:

Don Estridge, William Lowe (IBM PC)
Robert Taylor (Xerox Alto)
Jef Raskin (Macintosh)
Rod Canion (Compaq)

11. Computer Systems:

Andreas von Bechtolsheim (Sun)
Mark Hannah (SGI)
Jeff Hawkins (Palm Pilot)
Bill Moggridge (First laptop)

12. Supercomputer:

Seymour Cray (Cray)
Daniel Hillis (Thinking Machine)
Thomas Sterling (Linux cluster)

13. Processor Technology:

Carver Mead (VLSI)
John Cocke (RISC)
Robert Dennard (Transistor storage)
Alain Martin (Asynchronous processor)

14. Peripherals:

Douglas Engelbart (Mouse)
Alan Shugart (Hard disk)
Gary Starkweather (Laser printer)
Wolfgang Helfrich (TN-effect))

15. Computer Science:

Donald Knuth ("The Art of Computer Programming")
Edsger Dijkstra (Structured programming)
Niklaus Wirth (various languages)
Charles Simonyi (Microsoft)

16. Operating Systems:

Linus Torvalds (Linux)
Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie (UNIX)
Gary Kildall (CP/M)
Tim Paterson (QDOS/MS-DOS)

17. Programming Languages:

John Backus (FORTRAN)
Grace Hopper (Compiler)
John Kemeny, Tom Kurtz (BASIC)
James Gosling (Java)

18. Interfaces:

Alan Kay (Graphic User Interface)
Ivan Sutherland (Virtual Reality)
Susan Kare (Apple icons)

19. Data Bank:

Larry Ellison (Oracle)
Edgar Codd (Relational data bank)
Wayne Ratliff (dBase)

20. Application Programs:

Dan Bricklin, Mitch Kapor (Speadsheets)
Stephen Wolfram (Mathematica)
Michael Shrayer (Word processing)
Kai Krause (Computer graphics)

21. Software Houses:

Hasso Plattner (SAP)
Ross Perot (EDS)
Robert Young (Red Hat)

22. Artificial Intelligence:

Ed Feigenbaum (Expert systems)
John McCarthy (LISP)
Frans Morsch ("Fritz" chess programs)
Wolfgang Wahlster ("Verbmobil" speech processing software)

23. Computer Graphics:

Daniel Langlois (Softimage)
Ed Catmull (RenderMan, Pixar)
Benoit Mandelbrot (Fractals)
Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann (MIRALab)

24. Robotics:

Rodney Brooks (hexapods, facial robots)
Ichiro Kato (Bipedal robots)
Joseph Engelberger (Industrials robots)
Gerd Hirzinger (Hands)

25. Networks:

Larry Roberts, Frank Heart (ARPANET)
Vinton Cerf (TCP/IP)
Robert Metcalfe (Ethernet)
Ray Tomlinson (electronic mail)

26. World Wide Web:

Tim Berners-Lee (WWW)
Marc Andreessen (Netscape browser)
Larry Page, Sergey Brin (Google)
Pierre Omidyar (eBay)

27. Cryptology:

Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman (Public-key cryptology)
Ronald Rivest (RSA)
Phil Zimmermann (PGP)
Wau Holland (CCC)

28. Executives:

Bill Gates (Microsoft)
Bill Hewlett, David Packard (Hewlett-Packard)
Andy Grove (Intel)
Hans-Olaf Henkel (IBM Germany/Europe)

29. Media:

Esther Dyson (Release 2.0)
Wolfgang Back, Wolfgang Rudolph (Television computer shows)
Walter Fuchs (Early introductions)
Werner "Tiki" Küstenmacher (PC books) )

30. Games:

Nolan Bushnell (Atari)
Shigeru Miyamoto (Nintendo)
Bruce Artwick (Flight simulator)
John Conway ("Life")

31. Teams:

Californian Hacker of the 1970s
Japanese Otaku
Indian programmers
Dotcommies of the 1990s

32. Science Fiction:

William Gibson (Cyberpunk)
Isaac Asimov (Robots)
Neal Stephenson ("Cryptonomicon")
Stanislaw Lem (Robots, Virtual Reality)

33. Virtual Characters:

Lara Croft (Tomb Raider)
Pac-Man, Kyoko Date (Virtual celebrity)
Ananova (News avatar)

34. Audiovision:

Karlheinz Brandenburg, Bernhard Grill, Harald Popp, Heinz Gerhäuser, Jürgen Herre, Ernst Eberlein (MP3)
Robert Glaser (Real Networks)
Shawn Fanning (Napster)
Kraftwerk (Techno music)

35. Philosophy:

Joseph Weizenbaum (Computer critic)
Marshall McLuhan (Media guru)
Max Bense, Gotthard Günther (Computer philosophy)

36. Paderborn:

Karl-Heinz Stiller (Wincor Nixdorf)
Burkhard Monien (University)
Jürgen Sonntag (b.i.b.)
Horst Joepen (Webwasher)

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