Not as famous as they should be (2021)

Hal Laning, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;J._Halcombe_Laning" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;J._Halcombe_Laning</a> , made the first compiler. (Grace Hopper&#x27;s thing did not parse source code. She just <i>described</i> it as a compiler.)<p>He also coded the OS on the Apollo Guidance Computer that saved the day and mission, during the Apollo 11 moon landing, by rebooting into saved state and resuming real-time control of the vehicle without a hiccup, when operator errors repeatedly overloaded it. (Margaret Hamilton is often given credit for this, but she programmed other stuff.)<p>He never got the Turing Award he so richly deserved.

Someone who is quite well-known, but maybe doesn&#x27;t get all the credit they really deserve, is Sophie Wilson. Not only did she design the ARM instruction set, but before that she spent fifteen years working on BBC BASIC, the language that so many of us in the UK first learnt to program in. Not sure I would have had a career in the tech sector without her.

I generally assume credit is poorly assigned. In my former job as an applied researcher letting my boss get the credit for my ideas was practically part of the job description. My former boss has a bad memory so he’d tell me his great ideas forgetting they were mine. Instead of correcting him I’d be ‘great idea boss, we should totally build that’ - and that’s how I got to build a ton of cool shit.

This guy invented the MOSFET, which is the underpinnings of pretty much every modern microprocessor.<p>Nobody knows his name. He is &quot;Not as Famous as He Should Be.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mohamed_M._Atalla" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mohamed_M._Atalla</a>

I can pretty much guarantee you that, for every person who is well-known for &quot;inventing&quot; something (especially in the 20th century onward), there are generally a whole lot of other people on the same project--or who were working in parallel on similar concepts elsewhere or who created something that was refined by the invention--who deserve at least a passing nod as well.

Nice article but I suspect a lot of people who have worked on projects that advance an area of technology, or indeed civilisation, are quite happy with their anonymity.

Vint Cerf is often referred to as &quot;the Father of the Internet&quot;; I suspect at his insentience.<p>Really tho it was Jon Postel: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Jon_Postel" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Jon_Postel</a>

Weirdly negative tone towards Andy Warhol for seemingly no reason, otherwise interesting article. The guy (Warhol) was almost 60 years old when the Amiga came out and already a pretty famous name.

What would be the opposite? I.e., people more famous in computing than they should be.

Forget fame. Massive financial compensation is better.

&gt; Avril Harrison<p>So now I can put a name to the person whose art constantly made me feel bad about my Deluxe Paint skills :)

Ralph Griswold and Gary Kildall should be on this list. Complete legends.