11 People Who Changed the World and who Died in 2011 (And Were Not Named Steve)
- Dennis Ritchie – one of the creators of the Unix operating system and author of C programming language
- Ken Olsen – Co-founder of Digital Equipment Corp, the company that built PDP-7 (first computer to run Unix)
- Paul Baran – an important Internet pioneer who developed packet switching
- Jacob Goldman – in 1969 came up with the idea of setting up an independent research lab for copier-maker Xerox Corp, which lead to inventing the graphical user interface, Ethernet, the laser printer, and object-oriented programming
- John McCarthy – Creator of Lisp and the person who coined the term “artificial intelligence”
- John R. Opel – IBM Chairman John Opel ushered IBM’s PC into the market, taking over as CEO of the company in 1981
- Ashawna Hailey – AMD’s first Intel-compatible chip, the 9080, was built in 1974, by a team led by Ashawna Hailey
- Jean Bartik – ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the world’s first electronic computer’s programming was done by a crackerjack team of six women lead by Jean.
- Nobutoshi Kihara – Sony’s chief inventor. His groundbreaking work on magnetic tape recorders, videotape, and digital photography
- Robert Galvin – ran Motorola for nearly 30 years, ushering in the world’s first portable telephone and turning the small two-way radio manufacturing company he inherited from his father into the world’s leader in cellular phones
- Charles Walton – patented the technology used in RFID chips in the 1970s
Original Article: 11 Who Died in 2011 (And Were Not Named Steve)
