---
title: "List of computer scientists"
chunk: 5/7
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_scientists"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:53.571776+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== N ==
Mihai Nadin – anticipation research
Makoto Nagao – machine translation, natural language processing, digital library
Frieder Nake – pioneered computer arts
Bonnie Nardi – human–computer interaction
Peter Naur (1928–2016) – Backus–Naur form (BNF), ALGOL 60, IFIP WG 2.1 member
Roger Needham – computer security
James G. Nell – Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology (GERAM)
Greg Nelson (1953–2015) – satisfiability modulo theories, extended static checking, program verification, Modula-3 committee, Simplify theorem prover in ESC/Java
Bernard de Neumann – massively parallel autonomous cellular processor, software engineering research
Klara Dan von Neumann (1911–1963) – early computers, ENIAC programmer and control designer
John von Neumann (1903–1957) – early computers, von Neumann machine, set theory, functional analysis, mathematics pioneer, linear programming, quantum mechanics
Allen Newell – artificial intelligence, Computer Structures
Max Newman – Colossus computer, MADM
Andrew Ng – artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics
Nils John Nilsson (1933–2019) – artificial intelligence
G.M. Nijssen – Nijssen's Information Analysis Methodology (NIAM) object–role modeling
Tobias Nipkow – proof assistance
Maurice Nivat – theoretical computer science, Theoretical Computer Science journal, ALGOL, IFIP WG 2.1 member
Jerre Noe – computerized banking
Peter Nordin – artificial intelligence, genetic programming, evolutionary robotics
Donald Norman – user interfaces, usability
Peter Norvig – artificial intelligence, Director of Research at Google
George Novacky – University of Pittsburgh: assistant department chair, senior lecturer in computer science, assistant dean of CAS for undergraduate studies
Kristen Nygaard – Simula, object-oriented programming

== O ==
Martin Odersky – Scala programming language
Peter O'Hearn – separation logic, bunched logic, Infer Static Analyzer
T. William Olle – Ferranti Mercury
Steve Omohundro
Severo Ornstein
John O'Sullivan – Wi-Fi
John Ousterhout – Tcl programming language
Mark Overmars – video game programming
Susan Owicki – interference freedom

== P ==
Larry Page – co-founder of Google
Sankar Pal
Paritosh Pandya
Christos Papadimitriou
Keshab K. Parhi
David Park (1935–1990) – first Lisp implementation, expert in fairness, program schemas, bisimulation in concurrent computing
David Parnas – information hiding, modular programming
DJ Patil – former Chief Data Scientist of United States
Yale Patt – Instruction-level parallelism, speculative architectures
David Patterson – reduced instruction set computer (RISC), RISC-V, redundant arrays of inexpensive disks (RAID), Berkeley Network of Workstations (NOW)
Mike Paterson – algorithms, analysis of algorithms (complexity)
Mihai Pătraşcu – data structures
Lawrence Paulson – ML
Randy Pausch (1960–2008) – human–computer interaction, Carnegie professor, "Last Lecture"
Juan Pavón – software agents
Judea Pearl – artificial intelligence, search algorithms
Alan Perlis – Programming Pearls
Radia Perlman – Spanning Tree Protocol
Pier Giorgio Perotto – computer designer at Olivetti, designer of the Programma 101 programmable calculator
Rózsa Péter – recursive function theory
Simon Peyton Jones – functional programming, Glasgow Haskell Compiler, C--
Kathy Pham – data, artificial intelligence, civic technology, healthcare, ethics
Roberto Pieraccini – speech technologist, engineering director at Google
Keshav Pingali – IEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award, ACM Fellow (2012)
Gordon Plotkin
Amir Pnueli – temporal logic
Willem van der Poel – computer graphics, robotics, geographic information systems, imaging, multimedia, virtual environments, games
Robin Popplestone – COWSEL (renamed POP-1), POP-2, POP-11 languages, Poplog IDE; Freddy II robot
Cicely Popplewell (1920–1995) – British software engineer in 1960s
Emil Post – mathematics
Jon Postel – Internet
Franco Preparata – computer engineering, computational geometry, parallel algorithms, computational biology
William H. Press – numerical algorithms

== R ==
Rapelang Rabana
Grzegorz Rozenberg – natural computing, automata theory, graph transformations and concurrent systems
Michael O. Rabin – nondeterministic machine
Dragomir R. Radev – natural language processing, information retrieval
T. V. Raman – accessibility, Emacspeak
Brian Randell – ALGOL 60, software fault tolerance, dependability, pre-1950 history of computing hardware
Anders P. Ravn – Duration Calculus
Raj Reddy – artificial intelligence
David P. Reed
Trygve Reenskaug – model–view–controller (MVC) software architecture pattern
John C. Reynolds – continuations, definitional interpreters, defunctionalization, Forsythe, Gedanken language, intersection types, polymorphic lambda calculus, relational parametricity, separation logic, ALGOL
Joyce K. Reynolds – Internet
Reinder van de Riet – Editor: Europe of Data and Knowledge Engineering, COLOR-X event modeling language
Bernard Richards – medical informatics
Martin Richards – Basic Combined Programming Language (BCPL)
Adam Ries – advocate for Arabic numerals to replace Roman numerals
C. J. van Rijsbergen
Dennis Ritchie – C (programming language), Unix
Ron Rivest – RSA, MD5, RC4
Lawrence Roberts – ARPANET program manager, Internet cofounder
Paul Robertson (researcher) - AI researcher
Ken Robinson – formal methods
Colette Rolland – REMORA methodology, meta modelling
John Romero – codeveloped Doom
Azriel Rosenfeld
Douglas T. Ross – Automatically Programmed Tools (APT), Computer-aided design, structured analysis and design technique, ALGOL X
Ronald S. Ross - Computer Scientist
Guido van Rossum – Python (programming language)
M. A. Rothman – UEFI
Winston W. Royce – waterfall model
Rudy Rucker – mathematician, writer, educator
Steven Rudich – complexity theory, cryptography
Jeff Rulifson
James Rumbaugh – Unified Modeling Language, Object Management Group
Peter Ružička – Slovak computer scientist and mathematician