Dennis
Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was an American computer scientist who "helped shape the digital era."
He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson,
the Unix operating system. Ritchie and Thompson received the Turing Award from the ACM in 1983,
the Hamming Medal from the IEEE in 1990 and the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton
in 1999. Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he
retired in 2007. He was the 'R' in K&R C and commonly known by his username dmr.
Alan
Alan Mathison Turing, was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist.
He was highly influential in the development of computer science, giving a formalisation of the
concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model
of a general purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science
and artificial intelligence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
Ada
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852),
born Augusta Ada Byron and now commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician
and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer,
the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm
intended to be processed by a machine. Because of this, she is often described as the world's first
computer programmer.