CSC 599: Senior Capstone
Fall 2020
Computing Pioneers
One of the goals of this capstone is to provide graduating seniors with a broad perspective on the discipline of computer science. Each week, students will present short (~10 minute) biographies of impactful computing pioneers. Each presentation should include the following:
- the name and birth/death dates for that person
- their personal background
- important positions that they held
- awards and recognitions received
- key ideas and advancements that person is known for
Each presenter should prepare 1-2 pages of notes for their presentation, including a list of at least three reputable sources used in their research. The presentation notes will be turned in at the end of the seession (either by hand or through BlueLine).
The computing pioneers to be presented this semester are:
- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
- Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)
- John von Neumann (1903-1957)
- John Atanasoff (1903-1995)
- Grace Hopper (1906-1992)
- Akira Nakashima (1908-1970)
- Konrad Zuse (1910-1995)
- Alan Turing (1912-1954)
- Claude Shannon (1916-2001)
- Katherine Johnson (1918-2020)
- Doug Engelbart (1925-2013)
- Paul Baran (1926-2011)
- Robert Noyce (1927-1990)
- Marvin Minsky (1927-2016)
- Edsger Dijkstra (1930-2002)
- Fred Brooks (1931-)
- Margaret Hamilton (1936-)
- Don Knuth (1938-)
- Barbara Liskov (1939-)
- Dennis Ritchie (1941-)
- Vint Cerf (1943-)
- Ron Rivest (1943-)
- Whitfield Diffie (1944-)
- Steve Wozniak (1950-)
- Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
- Tim Berners-Lee (1955-)
- Bill Gates (1955-)
- Mark Dean (1957-)
- Jeff Bezos (1964-)
- Linus Torvalds (1969-)
- Marc Andreessen (1971-)
- Larry Page (1973-)
- Satoshi Nakamoto (1975-)
- Mark Zuckerberg (1984-)