Great hackers of the world

This page contains the names,webpages and works of the greatest hackers this world has ever seen.You can even get their email addresses on their webpage.Click on the links provided to get more information about your favourite hacker.
Harold Abelson (web page) Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Along with Gerald Sussman, Abelson is the author of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, the fabled Wizard Book. Eric Allman (web page) Eric Allman is the main author of the sendmail program, which is used by most Unix-like systems to deliver SMTP (emails), although certain alternatives have become popular, such as Daniel Bernstein's qmail program. Eric Allman is Kirk McKusick's partner. Charles Babbage Born: Monday, December 26, 1791, in London (England). Died: Wednesday, October 18, 1871, in London (England). Babbage is considered one of the forefathers of computer science for having designed and built the difference engine, and having imagined (with the help of Ada Lovelace) the analytical engine, which, although it was never built in his lifetime, can be considered as a true (mechanical) computer. See also Babbage's biography on the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. John W. Backus Born: Wednesday, December 3, 1924, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA). John Backus headed the development group at IBM which gave birth to the language FORTRAN (the oldest programming language, excepting theoretical concepts like the Lambda Calculus, and, of course, assembler). John Backus is the 1977 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award and a charter recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award. Tim Berners-Lee (web page) Born: Wednesday, June 8, 1955, in London (UK). Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of what is now known as the World Wide Web: his original proposal for Information Management, circulated in 1989, is the founding idea of the hypertext information web; and he is the author of the original internet draft specifications of HTTP, HTML and URLs in 1993 (current specifications: HTTP, XHTML and URI). Daniel Julius Bernstein (web page) Vinton Cerf (web page — sort of) Born: Wednesday, June 23, 1943, in Newhaven, Connecticut (USA). Vinton Cerf is the father of the Internet. He and Bob Kahn are the principal architects of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) that is one of the foundational stones of the Internet (see for example this historical document), as well as the earlier Network Control Protocol (NCP). His speech The Internet is for Everyone, given at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference on April 7, 1999, defined the Internet Society's new motto. Now Vinton Cerf's interests include planning the development of the InterPlanetary Internet. Vinton Cerf is the 2004 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award. Sivasubramanian Chandrasegarampilai Designer of the Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic (HAL) computer. Alonzo Church Born: Sunday, June 14, 1903, in Washington, DC (USA). Died: Friday, August 11, 1995, in Hudson, Ohio (USA). Alonzo Church is the inventor of the Lambda Calculus, which is in a way the first programming language ever. See also Church's biography on the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. Alan Cox (web page — sort of) Alan Cox is the vice-pinguin after Linus Torvalds. Seymour R. Cray Born: Monday, September 28, 1925, in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin (USA). Died: Saturday, October 5, 1996, in Colorado Springs, Colorado (USA). He founded Cray Research in 1972; in 1976, he unveiled the CRAY-1, the world's first supercomputer. Seymour Cray is a charter recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award. Haskell Brooks Curry Born: Wednesday, September 12, 1900, in Millis, Massachusetts (USA). Died: Wednesday, September 1, 1982, in State College, Pennsylvania (USA). The programming language Haskell is named after him; and so is the “currying” operation on functions of several arguments. See also Curry's biography on the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. David Cutler (fan club) Architect of DEC's VMS operating system, and of Microsoft's Windows NT. Theo de Raadt (web site) Theo de Raadt is the founder of the OpenBSD project after a dispute with the NetBSD core team in 1995. L. Peter Deutsch Peter Deutsch encountered the world of the True Hackers of the “Tech Model Railroad Club” (at MITAI Lab) at age twelve when he discovered the TX-0's console. In 1963, when he was still a high school student, he developped the first interactive implementation of Lisp, for the PDP-1 computer. He worked on Smalltalk at Xerox PARC from 1971 to 1986. He is the author of the ghostscript program, started in 1986 (for which he promised Richard Stallman that all versions would eventually be released under the GNU GPL). He presides Aladdin Enterprises. Whitfield Diffie Born: Monday, June 5, 1944. Inventor of public key cryptography. Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (web page) Born: 1930, in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). Died: Tuesday, August 6, 2002, in Nuenen (the Netherlands). Edsger Dijkstra is the inventor of the concept of semaphore, which is at the basis of all synchronized programming. He is also one of the main contributors to the language ALGOL. Edsger Dijkstra is the 1972 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award and a charter recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award. His famous speech, Go To Statement Considered Harmful, has become a classic. John “Captain Crunch” Draper (web page) Fame — and trouble — came to John Draper when he discovered a way to crack (“phreak”) into the phone company's network. Jim Ellis Born: 1956? Died: Thursday, June 28, 2001, in Harmony, Pennsylvania (USA). Jim Ellis was co-creator of Usenet. John “GNU” Gilmore (web page) John Gilmore is the co-founder of Cygnus Solutions, and of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. James Gosling (web page) Gosling is the inventor of the Java programming language. Richard William Gosper Born: 1943? One of the True Hackers, the mathematician of the lot, and sometime mentor to RMS. He was fascinated by Conway's “Game of Life” when he learned about it, and he contributed much to its study. He later took part in the writing of the MacSyma program. Richard Greenblatt Arch-Hacker of the True Hackers. Richard Greenblatt is the inventor of the Lisp machine, and his “betrayal” by the Symbolics team brought the end of the True Hackers' era. Grace Brewster Murray Hopper Born (Grace Brewster Murray): Sunday, December 9, 1906, in New York City, New York (USA). Died: Wednesday, January 1, 1992, in Arlington, Virginia (USA). She was rear admiral in the United States Navy. She programmed the world's first computers, notably the Mark I through Mark III. Later, she had a hand in standardizing COBOL. Jordan Hubbard (web page) Co-founder of the FreeBSD project. David Albert Huffman Born: 1925? Inventor of a method for constructing binary trees which is of great importance in compression theory. Steven Jobs Born: February 1955 (adopted after birth), in Los Altos, California (USA). Steve Jobs is the co-founder of Apple. William N. Joy Born: 1955? Bill Joy started the “BSD” flavor of Unix, with Chuck Halley. He is co-founder of Sun Microsystems (with Andreas Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy). Bill Joy is the 1986 recipient of the ACM's G. M. Hopper Award. Robert E. Kahn Born: Friday, December 23, 1938, in New York City, New York (USA). Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf are the principal architects of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) that is one of the foundational stones of the Internet. Bob Kahn is a 1996 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award and the 2004 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award. Brian Wilson Kernighan (web page) Brian Kernighan is the co-inventor, with Alfred Aho and Peter Weinberg, of the Awk programming language. He is co-author, with Dennis Ritchie, of the Book on C. His critique of the Pascal language is justly famous. Stephen Cole Kleene Born: Tuesday, January 5, 1909, in Hartford, Connecticut (USA). Died: Tuesday, January 25, 1994, in Madison, Wisconsin (USA). See also Kleene's biography on the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. Tom Knight (web page) One of the True Hackers. Tom Knight had a hand (with Greenblatt and others) in developping the Incompatible Timesharing System, and he gave it its name. Donald Ervin Knuth (web page) Born: Monday, January 10, 1938, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (USA). Donald Knuth is the author of the (multi-volume, never-to-be-finished) treatise on programming entitled The Art Of Computer Programming (TAOCP). Because he was unhappy about the typesetter's job in printing this treatise, he invented (in the 1970's) his own typesetting program: TeX, which is still around and much used today. Donald Knuth is the 1974 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award, the 1971 recipient of the G. M. Hopper Award, a charter recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award. David C. “Tale” Lawrence Tale is one of the Usenet pioneers. Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace Born: Sunday, December 10, 1815, in Piccadily (England). Died: Saturday, November 27, 1852, in London (England). She was a daughter of the poet Lord Byron. She is often counted as the first “programmer”, for her work on Babbage's Analytical Engine. The programming language Ada is named after her. See also Ada Lovelace's biography on the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. John McCarthy (web page). Born: Sunday, September 4, 1927, in Boston, Massachusetts (USA). John McCarthy is the co-founder, with Marvin Minsky, of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, where, among other things, the True Hackers were bred — and he was something of an uncle to them all. He is also the inventor of the name, if not the term, of “artificial intelligence”. He is the inventor of the Lisp programming language (the second oldest after FORTRAN, and still considered unequaled by some), in 1958. John McCarthy is the 1971 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award and a 1985 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award. Marshall Kirk McKusick (web page) Kirk McKusick is one of the early developpers of BSDUnix. He designed and implemented the 4.2BSD Fast File System, and oversaw the development and release of 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD. He collaborates with the teams of all the BSD-descended systems, and recently contributed the “SoftUpdates” filesystem extension. He is Eric Allman's companion. Marvin Minsky (web page) Born: Tuesday, August 9, 1927, in New York City, New York (USA). Marvin Minsky is the co-founder, with John McCarthy, of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, where, among other things, the True Hackers were bred. Marvin Minsky has written many an influential text on artificial intelligence. Marvin Minsky is the 1969 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award and a 1995 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award. Blaise Pascal Born: Monday, June 19, 1623, in Clermont (France). Died: Saturday, August 19, 1662, in Paris (France). Pascal is the inventor of a digital calculator (and consequently counted as one of the forefathers of computer science), the “Pascaline”, but it would seem, in fact, that a calculator had already been invented by Schickard in 1624. The programming language Pascal (invented by Niklaus Wirth) is named after Blaise Pascal (see also Brian Kernighan's critique of this language). See also Pascal's biography on the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. Bruce Perens (web page) Alan J. Perlis Born: Saturday, April 1, 1922, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA). Died: Wednesday, February 7, 1990, in New Haven, Connecticut (USA). Alan Perlis was the first head of CMU's Computer Science Department. His taste for epigrams has left us many wise sayings about computers and computer science, such as “Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon”. Alan Perlis is the 1966 (first) recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award and a 1985 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award. Jonathan B. Postel (web page) Born: Friday, August 6, 1943, in Altadena, California (USA). Died: Friday, October 16, 1998, in Los Angeles, California (USA). Jon Postel created the RFC (“Requests For Comments”) series of documents, and was the RFC editor until his death. Dennis M. Ritchie (web page) Born: Tuesday, September 9, 1941, in Mount Vernon, New York (USA). Dennis Ritchie invented the C programming language, for use with Ken Thompson's recently invented Unix system, during his work at AT&T Bell Labs in 1969. He is co-author, with Brian Kernighan, of the Book on C. Dennis Ritchie is the 1983 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award (with Ken Thompson) and a 1994 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award. Eric Steven Raymond (web page) Adi Shamir Adi Shamir is the 2002 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award. Claude Elwood Shannon Born: Sunday, April 30, 1916, in Gaylord, Michigan (USA). Died: Saturday, February 24, 2001, in Medford, Massachusetts (USA). The father of information theory. See also Shannon's biography on the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. Gene Spafford (web page) Spaf is one of the Usenet pioneers, and more or less gave it its current form. He is a computer security expert. Richard Matthew Stallman (“RMS”) (web page) Born: Monday, March 16, 1953, in New York City, New York (USA). Last of the True Hackers. RMS is the author of the Emacs editor. He founded the GNU (“Gnu's Not Unix”) project in September 1983, to write a free clone of Ken Thompson's Unix operating system. He is the president of the Free Software Foundation, which he founded to host the GNU project. Richard Stallman is the 1990 recipient of the ACM's G. M. Hopper Award. He was also made a MacArthur foundation fellow (“genius”) for the 1990–1995 term. Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. Guy Steele is one of the inventors, with Gerry Sussman, of the Scheme programming language (a descendant of Lisp). He is employed by Sun Microsystems, where he has among other things helped develop the specifications of the Java language. Guy Steele is the 1988 recipient of the ACM's G. M. Hopper Award. W. Richard Stevens (web page) Born: 1951, in Luanshya (Northern Rhodesia). Died: Wednesday, September 1, 1999. Bjarne Stroustrup (web page) Born: 1950, in Aarhus (Denmark). Stroustrup invended the C++ programming language. Gerald Jay Sussman (web page) Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gerry Sussman is one of the inventors, with Guy Stele, of the Scheme programming language (a descendant of Lisp). Along with Harold Abelson, Sussman is the author of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, the fabled Wizard Book. Robert Endre Tarjan (web page) Born: Friday, April 30, 1948, in Pomona, California (USA). Robert Tarjan is the 1986 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award and the 1982 (first) recipient of the International Mathematicians' Union Nevanlinna Prize. Kenneth Thompson (web page) Born: Thursday, February 4, 1943, in New Orleans, Louisiana (USA). Ken Thompson invented the operating system Unix during his work at AT&T Bell Labs in 1970. Ken Thompson is the 1983 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award (with Dennis Ritchie) and a 1994 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award. Linus Benedict Torvalds (web page) Born: Sunday, December 28, 1969, in Helsinki (Finland). Linus is the author of the Linux operating system kernel, which has, in a way, provided a successful term to the GNU project started by Richard Stallman. Alan Mathison Turing Born: Sunday, June 23, 1912, in London (England). Died: Monday, June 7, 1954, in Wilmslow, Cheshire (England). Turing was one of Alonzo Church's doctoral students. In 1936, he defined what is now referred to as a “Turing machine”, and proved the universality theorem. He is often considered as the founder of computer science. During WW2, he became a hero by building a machine which could decode the German communications enciphered by means of the “enigma” device. He was homosexual, and completely open about it; but homosexual acts were forbidden in England until 1966. After Turing was convicted in 1952, he was made to take hormonal injections which made him deeply unhappy. He died of cyanide poisoning, and while it is often thought to have been suicide, it was more probably accidental. See also Turing's biography on the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. John von Neumann Born: Monday, December 28, 1903, in Budapest (Hungary). Died: Friday, February 8, 1957, in Washington DC (USA). Von Neumann is credited with the idea of having a computer store its instructions (code) in the same memory as it stores its data (rather than, e.g. in hardwired form). This makes him the inventor of the modern computer. See also von Neumann's biography on the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive. Paul Vixie (web page — sort of) Paul Vixie is a director of the Internet Software Consortium Larry Wall (web page) Larry Wall wrote the “patch” program. He is the inventor of the Perl programming language. Niklaus E. Wirth Born: Thursday, February 15, 1934, in Winterhur (Switzerland). Wirth is the inventor of the Pascal programming language (named in honor of Blaise Pascal). Niklaus Wirth is the 1984 recipient of the ACM's A. M. Turing Award and a 1987 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award. Stephen Wozniak (web page) Born: Friday, August 11, 1950. Wozniak designed the first “Apple” computer. Stephen Wozniak is the 1979 recipient of the ACM's G. M. Hopper Award.