The Computer Pioneer Award was established in 1981 by the Board of Governors of the
IEEE Computer Society
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...
to recognize and honor the vision of those people whose efforts resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the computer industry. The award is presented to outstanding individuals whose main contribution to the concepts and development of the computer field was made at least fifteen years earlier.
The recognition is engraved on a silver medal specially struck for the Society.
This award has now been renamed to "Women of the ENIAC Computer Pioneer Award".
Award types
The award has two types of recipients:
* Computer Pioneer Charter Recipients - At the inauguration of this award, the individuals who already meet the Computer Pioneer Award criteria and also have received
IEEE Computer Society
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...
awards prior to 1981.
* Computer Pioneer Recipients - Awarded annually since 1981.
Gene M. Amdahl
Gene Myron Amdahl (November 16, 1922 – November 10, 2015) was an American computer architect and high-tech entrepreneur, chiefly known for his work on mainframe computers at IBM and later his own companies, especially Amdahl Corporation ...
C. Gordon Bell
Chester Gordon Bell (born August 19, 1934) is an American electrical engineer and manager. An early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) 1960–1966, Bell designed several of their PDP machines and later became Vice President of Eng ...
- Computer Design
*
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. (April 19, 1931 – November 17, 2022) was an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the O ...
- Compatible Computer Family System/ IBM 360
* Wesley A. Clark - First Personal Computer
*
Fernando J. Corbato
Fernando is a Spanish and Portuguese given name and a surname common in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Switzerland, former Spanish or Portuguese colonies in Latin America, Africa, the Philippines, India, and Sri Lanka. It is equivalent to the G ...
- Timesharing
*
Seymour R. Cray
Seymour Roger Cray (September 28, 1925 – October 5, 1996 ) was an American
Edsger W. Dijkstra
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra ( ; ; 11 May 1930 – 6 August 2002) was a Dutch computer scientist, programmer, software engineer, systems scientist, and science essayist. He received the 1972 Turing Award for fundamental contributions to developing progra ...
- Multiprogramming Control
* J. Presper Eckert - First All-Electronic Computer:
ENIAC
ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one pac ...
*
Jay W. Forrester
Jay Wright Forrester (July 14, 1918 – November 16, 2016) was a pioneering American computer engineer and systems scientist. He is credited with being one of the inventors of magnetic core memory, the predominant form of random-access computer ...
- First Large-Scale Coincident Current Memory
*
Herman H. Goldstine
Herman Heine Goldstine (September 13, 1913 – June 16, 2004) was a mathematician and computer scientist, who worked as the director of the IAS machine at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study and helped to develop ENIAC, th ...
- Contributions to Early Computer Design
*
Richard W. Hamming
Richard Wesley Hamming (February 11, 1915 – January 7, 1998) was an American mathematician whose work had many implications for computer engineering and telecommunications. His contributions include the Hamming code (which makes use of a Ham ...
-
Error-correcting code
In computing, telecommunication, information theory, and coding theory, an error correction code, sometimes error correcting code, (ECC) is used for controlling errors in data over unreliable or noisy communication channels. The central idea i ...
*
Jean A. Hoerni
Jean Amédée Hoerni (September 26, 1924 – January 12, 1997) was a Swiss-American engineer. He was a silicon transistor pioneer, and a member of the "traitorous eight". He developed the planar process, an important technology for reliably fab ...
- Planar Semiconductor Manufacturing Process
* Grace M. Hopper - Automatic Programming
*
Alston S. Householder
Alston Scott Householder (5 May 1904 – 4 July 1993) was an American mathematician who specialized in mathematical biology and numerical analysis.
He is the inventor of the Householder transformation and of Householder's method.
Career
Househ ...
Kenneth E. Iverson
Kenneth Eugene Iverson (17 December 1920 – 19 October 2004) was a Canadian computer scientist noted for the development of the programming language APL. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 "for his pioneering effort in programming l ...
Tom Kilburn
Tom Kilburn (11 August 1921 – 17 January 2001) was an English mathematician and computer scientist. Over the course of a productive 30-year career, he was involved in the development of five computers of great historical significance. With ...
- Paging Computer Design
* Donald E. Knuth - Science of Computer
Algorithms
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...
ENIAC
ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one pac ...
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machine
A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, moveme ...
George R. Stibitz
George Robert Stibitz (April 30, 1904 – January 31, 1995) was a Bell Labs researcher internationally recognized as one of the fathers of the modern digital computer. He was known for his work in the 1930s and 1940s on the realization of Boolea ...
- First Remote Computation
* Shmuel Winograd - Efficiency of Computational
Algorithms
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...
All members of the profession are invited to nominate a colleague who they consider most eligible to be considered for this award. The nomination deadline is 15 October of each year.
Nomination process
List of awards named after people
This is a list of awards that are named after people.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U - V
W
Y
Z
See also
* Lists of awards
* List of eponyms
*List of awards named after governors- ...