Programmers by Country
Origin of Computer Science:
Computer science is the study of computers and computational systems that handle software systems, including their theory, design, development, and application. Some principal computer science studies include artificial intelligence, computer system and network, database systems, security, vision and graphics, human-computer interaction, numerical analysis, programming languages, software engineering, bioinformatics, and theory of computing. Computer scientists analyze old algorithms and make new ones solve programs, and study the performance of computer hardware and software.
Traveling back in time, computer science began to be established in the early 1950s and 1960s as a distinct academic discipline. In 1953, the world’s first computer science degree program was established at the Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science. A man who goes by the name of Alan Turner is credited with the title as the founder and father of computer science. Alan Mathison Turning was born on June 23, 1912, and is recognized as the son of an Indian civil servant. Turning was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1951, but the true recognition for his work and career contribution only came along after his death. Despite his death at a very young age of 41 years old, Alan Turing’s social and political influence in the field of Computer Science will live on for the foreseeable future.
Guido van Rossum — Netherlands
Python has gained the most popularity over the past few years out of all the programming languages. It is also considered the easiest language to learn since it’s so straightforward. For example, you could write, “if apple = green, print 1 — if-else print 2”. The creator of Python was a Dutchman named Guido van Rossum. In the late 1890s, Rossum worked at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, a mathematical and computer science center located in Amsterdam, developing an operating system known as Amoeba. The goal of Amoeba was to make a network of computers appear as a single computer. Considering how much time it would take for project Amoeba to finish, he decided it would be a better use of time to build a whole new language from scratch. In doing so, they would still be ahead of the game compared to the current situation.
As his first project, he built a language known as ABC but later found out it wasn’t well suited to communicate to servers, file systems, and processes. Later on, over a long period of holiday break in December of 1989, he started developing an ABC-like language that could communicate with an OS called Python, taking inspiration from Monty Python’s Flying Circus television program. As time went on, he continued to evolve the new language in his spare time. Decades later, it became one of the most well-known and used programming languages worldwide.
Mark Zuckerberg — USA
Another famous well-known programmer is the current chief executive officer of Facebook named Mark Zuckerberg. On May 14, 1984, Mark was born at White Plains, New York. Zuckerberg began his initial use of computers and coding software in his early teens. During his high school years, Mark Zukerberg worked at an obscure company called Intelligent Media Group to create and build a music player named the Synapse media player. By the time he started his study at Harvard University in 2002, he was already known as a programming prodigy. There he studied computer science and psychology. In his sophomore year, he made a program called Course Match which allowed users to select classes based on the choice of other students and help them form a study group along the way. The following semester, in January 2004, he began programming for a new website.
On the 4th of February 2004, he launched the website that came to be known as “Thefacebook.com.” That year, he dropped out of Harvard University to pursue his dream and complete his new project. As of October 2021, there is a record of 2.910 billion Facebook users worldwide.
Shafrira Goldwasser — USA
A programmer well known for her coding achievements and lifestyle is Shafrira Goldwasser. She was also born in New York on November 14, 1958. Since her parents were Hebrew, she considers herself as an Israeli-American. Shafrira Goldwasser is a computer scientist and the winner of the Turning Award, also known as the Nobel Prize of Computing, in 2012.
Shafira also won many other awards other than the Turning Awards, including the Godel Prize award in the years 1993 and 2001 (annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science), the Grace Murray Hopper award in 1996,(an award that goes to a computer scientist or professional who makes a single significant technical contribution at the age of 35 or younger) ACM-W Athena Lecturer award in 2008(awards women researchers who have made some fundamental contributions in the field of Computer Science), IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award in 2011(technical field award given to an individual who has made exceptional contributions to informational computer systems), and last but not least the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer Science and Cognitive Science in the year of 2010(an award in the field of science).
Recently, Shafrira has worked as the RSA professor of electrical engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She’s also known as a professor of mathematical science at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and the director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing in Berkeley, California, and co-founder and chief scientist of Duality technologies.
Samarendra Mitra — India
A computer prodigy well recognized for his accomplishment but doesn’t deserve enough popularity or the right amount of attention in computer science is Samarendra Kumar Mitra. Mitra is an Indian computer scientist and mathematician. He was born on March 14, 1916, and passed away on September 26, 1998. Even from a young age, Mitra was a wise learner and had a wide range of interests in mathematics, physics, poultry science, Sanskrit language, religion, chemistry, biology, and literature. At 15, he studied at the Bowbazar High School of Calcutta and completed his Matriculation in 1st Division in 1931. Later years, he worked towards his Ph.D. in Physics under Professor Meghnad Saha but did not pursue it after his mentor’s death in 1956.
During his years of life, he worked in various capacities from 1950 to 1976 as a professor, research professor, and director at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). He is most well known for developing and constructing India’s first indigenous electronic analog computer in 1954 at the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, through his lifelong works and achievements. The computer he had built was used for numerical computing solutions of simultaneous linear equations using a modified version of Gauss-Seidel iteration. Samarendra Mitra is known as the father of Computers in India, and his lifelong tasks and biographies can be found in the history museum of computers in California. But, not only is he known as the father of India’s first computer but also as the founder of the electronics division of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and computing machines.
Throughout his life, Mitra received many awards. Still, the most remarkable one was the UNESCO unique fellowship award that he received on his study of High-Speed Computing Machines in the United Kingdom and the United States of America between 1949 and 1950. He chose to work at Harvard University and Princeton University, and the Mathematical Laboratory University in Cambridge, United Kingdom, during those times. During his study at Princeton University, he became very close friends with many physicists, scientists, and mathematicians, including Albert Einstein. Surprisingly, he isn’t discussed or talked about at schools nowadays, but he will always have the title of the founding father of India’s first computer, and his legacy will continue to live forever in the hearts of many computer scientists to come,
Jin-Yi Cai
Last but not least, Jin-Yi Cai is an Asian American mathematician and computer scientist. Jin-Yi was born in Shangai, China in 1961. Jin studied at Fudan University in the year of 1977. Later, he would receive his P.H.D. in 1986 at Temple University and Cornell University.
Throughout his career, Jin-Yi received five awards which were a Presidential Young Investigator Award(awarded by the National Science Foundation of the United States Federal to young investigators in the field of science) in the year 1990, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship(awarded to physics, chemist, and mathematicians to provide support and a sense of recognition to young scientists and scholars) in Computer Science in 1994, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship(awarded to scholars that demonstrated exceptional education capacity for productive scholarship or creative ability in the arts) in 1998, and a Morningside Silver Medal of Mathematics (awarded to remarkable Chinese mathematicians to encourage them in their pursuit of mathematics)in 2004.
Jin-Yi was also awarded the Godel Prize in Theoretical Computer Science and the Fulkerson Prize in Discrete Mathematics (awarded for unique and outstanding research papers in mathematics). In 1996, he advanced from assistant professor to full professor at Princeton University. As of 2000, he works as a professor of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Wonders of Computer Science:
Computer Science, the broad study of computers and computational systems, can help humans take our next step into evolution by preparing us for what the future has installed for us. As we slowly approach the end, artificial intelligence(AI) will only get better and smarter by the day. If humans are meant to live for so long, then AI will eventually surpass our knowledge and strength and take control of us one day. But, before that can happen, we can take this time to prepare and look for ways to protect ourselves, whether that’s learning to code or operate a computer in general. Knowing to program and code will defiantly be a lifesaver soon. Above all, an essential aspect of computer science might help improve our problem-solving skills, which is a crucial life skill.
Computer Science is an unknown language that has brought many together by not discriminating one’s race, culture, background, or language. It serves as a stepping stone for a more equitable world, expanding communication, furthering the current state of education, accelerating healthcare progress, and helping predict and avoid future catastrophes. We can find many ways to satisfy our needs and live an overall better life with computer science.
