Name:Anya Kansal

Class:V-A2
Roll no. :09
 For every world-famous name with a world famous
fortune, such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell,
there are hundreds of other individuals who have moved the
IT industry and its technology inexorably forward.

Fame and fortune has rarely been their immediate

spur. A passion for changing the world through technology
is the hallmark of the IT Greats. Sometimes they have
changed technology, sometimes they have transformed the
way technology is marketed or radically altered the way IT
is perceived by society.

Some have been involved in great leaps forward,

some have made incremental changes that have stood the
test of time.

Whatever the case, our industry is truly one where

we all stand on the shoulders of giants, and we are proud to
pay tribute to some of them in the results of our IT Greats
poll.
 Steve Jobs, the co-founder and chief
executive of Apple Computer, topped the
Computer Weekly 40th anniversary poll due to
the devoted following he has generated
through his pioneering work in personal
computing and product design.

Tim Berners Lee is the father of the

web and champion of IT freedom. He made
the imaginative leap to combine the internet
with the hypertext concept, and the
worldwide web was born.
In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It
comprised various companies willing to
create standards and recommendations to
improve the quality of the web.
 As joint founder of the worlds
biggest software company, Microsoft, Bill
Gatess approach to technology and business
was instrumental in making technology
available to the masses. Gates stood down
as the CEO of Microsoft in 2000 to focus on
software development.

In 1984, Gosling joined Sun

Microsystems where he is currently the
chief technology officer in the developer
product group.
In the early 1990s, Gosling
initiated and led a project code-named
Green that eventually became Java. Green
aimed to develop software that would run
on a variety of computing devices without
having to be customized for each one.
 As the creator of the Linux operating
system, Linus Torvalds has been a driving
force behind the whole open source
movement, which represents an ever
increasing challenge to proprietary software.
Torvalds remains the ultimate
authority on what new code is incorporated
into the Linux kernel.

Richard Stallman is the founder

of the GNU Project, an initiative to
develop a complete Unix-like operating
system which is free software. Stallman
has written several popular tools,
created the GNU license and campaigns
against software patents.
 2001: A Space Odyssey writer
Arthur Clarke has consistently been
ahead of his time in predicting how
technology will change the world.
Most notably, in 1945 he suggested
that geostationary satellites would
make ideal telecoms relays.

Ted Codd created 12

rules on which every
relational database is built -
an essential ingredient for
building business computer
systems.
 Steve Shirley was an early
champion of women in IT. She
founded the company now known as
Xansa, pioneered new work practices
and in doing so, created new
opportunities for women in
technology.

With Brent Hoberman, Martha

Lane Fox created Lastminute.com in
1998, and as "the face" of Lastminute
raised the profile of e-commerce ever
higher in the public consciousness.
 Ken Olsen is the
founder of Dec, who invented
the minicomputer.

Clive Sinclair is the

founder of Sinclair
electronics, Sinclair line of
computers.
He is also a home
computer visionary.
 Vinton Cerf is one of
the internet's founding
fathers. He is also one of
the fathers of the Internet
and "Chief Internet
Evangelist" at Google.

Bill Joy is the co-

founder of Sun Microsystems.
 Larry Ellison is a
Jewish billionaire and the
founder of the technology
company Oracle.

Steve Wozniak is the

Apple co-founder.
 Dennis Ritchie is the
inventor of the C
programming language.

Donald Davies is the

co-inventor of packet
switching.
 Ken Thompson is the
co-creator of Unix.

Grace Hopper is a
COBOL pioneer.
 Paul Allen is the
Microsoft Co-founder and he
is a wealthy Internet
Entrepreneur.

Steve Ballmer is the

Chief Executive Officer
(CEO) of Microsoft
Corporation.
 Jeff Bezos is the
billionaire Amazon.com
founder and Internet
Entrepreneur.

Sergey Brin is the

Google search engine co-
founder and billionaire
Internet Entrepreneur.
 Steve Case is the AOL
(America Online) founder.
He is also an Internet
Entrepreneur.

Mark Cuban is a
billionaire Internet
Entrepreneur and NBA
basketball team owner.