Topic: Biography/science and academia (Page 2)

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πŸ”— Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Soviet Union πŸ”— Russia πŸ”— Russia/technology and engineering in Russia πŸ”— Spaceflight πŸ”— Biography/science and academia πŸ”— Transhumanism πŸ”— Russia/science and education in Russia πŸ”— Biography/arts and entertainment πŸ”— Rocketry

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky (Russian: ΠšΠΎΠ½ΡΡ‚Π°Π½Ρ‚ΠΈΜΠ½ Эдуа́рдович Циолко́вский; 17 SeptemberΒ [O.S. 5 September]Β 1857 – 19 September 1935) was a Russian and Soviet rocket scientist who pioneered astronautics. Along with the Frenchman Robert Esnault-Pelterie, the Germans Hermann Oberth and Fritz von Opel, and the American Robert H. Goddard, he is one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry and astronautics. His works later inspired leading Soviet rocket-engineers Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko, who contributed to the success of the Soviet space program.

Tsiolkovsky spent most of his life in a log house on the outskirts of Kaluga, about 200Β km (120Β mi) southwest of Moscow. A recluse by nature, his unusual habits made him seem bizarre to his fellow townsfolk.

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πŸ”— A Russian scientist who was struck by a particle accelerator beam

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Russia πŸ”— Biography/science and academia πŸ”— Russia/science and education in Russia

Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski (Russian: Анатолий ΠŸΠ΅Ρ‚Ρ€ΠΎΠ²ΠΈΡ‡ Бугорский), born 25 June 1942, is a Russian scientist.

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πŸ”— Aaron Swartz

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Internet πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Internet culture πŸ”— New York City πŸ”— Biography/science and academia πŸ”— Biography/arts and entertainment πŸ”— United States/Massachusetts πŸ”— Chicago πŸ”— Open πŸ”— United States/Massachusetts - Boston πŸ”— Open Access

Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. He was involved in the development of the web feed format RSS, the Markdown publishing format, the organization Creative Commons, and the website framework web.py, and joined the social news site Reddit six months after its founding. He was given the title of co-founder of Reddit by Y Combinator owner Paul Graham after the formation of Not a Bug, Inc. (a merger of Swartz's project Infogami and Redbrick Solutions, a company run by Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman). Swartz's work also focused on civic awareness and activism. He helped launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in 2009 to learn more about effective online activism. In 2010, he became a research fellow at Harvard University's Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption, directed by Lawrence Lessig. He founded the online group Demand Progress, known for its campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act.

In 2011, Swartz was arrested by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after connecting a computer to the MIT network in an unmarked and unlocked closet, and setting it to download academic journal articles systematically from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him by MIT. Federal prosecutors, led by Carmen Ortiz, later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1Β million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release. Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in federal prison. Two days after the prosecution rejected a counter-offer by Swartz, he was found dead by suicide in his Brooklyn apartment. In 2013, Swartz was inducted posthumously into the Internet Hall of Fame.

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πŸ”— Alan Turing's 100th Birthday - Mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, scientist

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Mathematics πŸ”— London πŸ”— Philosophy πŸ”— Philosophy/Logic πŸ”— England πŸ”— Biography/science and academia πŸ”— Philosophy/Philosophy of science πŸ”— History of Science πŸ”— Computing/Computer science πŸ”— Robotics πŸ”— Philosophy/Philosophers πŸ”— Cryptography πŸ”— LGBT studies/LGBT Person πŸ”— LGBT studies πŸ”— Athletics πŸ”— Greater Manchester πŸ”— Cheshire πŸ”— Cryptography/Computer science πŸ”— Philosophy/Philosophy of mind πŸ”— Molecular and Cell Biology πŸ”— Surrey πŸ”— Running

Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Despite these accomplishments, he was not fully recognised in his home country during his lifetime, due to his homosexuality, and because much of his work was covered by the Official Secrets Act.

During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence. For a time he led Hut 8, the section that was responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. Here, he devised a number of techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bombe method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.

Turing played a crucial role in cracking intercepted coded messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic, and in so doing helped win the war. Due to the problems of counterfactual history, it is hard to estimate the precise effect Ultra intelligence had on the war, but at the upper end it has been estimated that this work shortened the war in Europe by more than two years and saved over 14Β million lives.

After the war Turing worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he designed the Automatic Computing Engine. The Automatic Computing Engine was one of the first designs for a stored-program computer. In 1948 Turing joined Max Newman's Computing Machine Laboratory, at the Victoria University of Manchester, where he helped develop the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology. He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis and predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, first observed in the 1960s.

Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts; the Labouchere Amendment of 1885 had mandated that "gross indecency" was a criminal offence in the UK. He accepted chemical castration treatment, with DES, as an alternative to prison. Turing died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning. An inquest determined his death as a suicide, but it has been noted that the known evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning.

In 2009, following an Internet campaign, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for "the appalling way he was treated". Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous pardon in 2013. The Alan Turing law is now an informal term for a 2017 law in the United Kingdom that retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.

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πŸ”— Dennis Ritchie

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Computer science πŸ”— Biography/science and academia πŸ”— New York (state) πŸ”— New York (state)/Hudson Valley πŸ”— Computing/Computer science πŸ”— Software πŸ”— Software/Computing πŸ”— C/C++ πŸ”— Japan πŸ”— New Jersey πŸ”— Linux

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – c. October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the Unix operating system and B programming language. Ritchie and Thompson were awarded the Turing Award from the ACM in 1983, the Hamming Medal from the IEEE in 1990 and the National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton in 1999. Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007. He was the "R" in K&R C, and commonly known by his username dmr.

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πŸ”— Grace Hopper

πŸ”— United States/U.S. Government πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/North American military history πŸ”— United States/Military history - U.S. military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— New York City πŸ”— Women scientists πŸ”— Biography/science and academia πŸ”— Women's History πŸ”— Military history/Military biography πŸ”— Biography/military biography πŸ”— Software πŸ”— Software/Computing πŸ”— Military history/Maritime warfare πŸ”— Pritzker Military Library

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (nΓ©eΒ Murray December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. One of the first programmers of the Harvard MarkΒ I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. She popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.

Prior to joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy Reserves. Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken. In 1949, she joined the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer. At Eckert–Mauchly she began developing the compiler. She believed that a programming language based on English was possible. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers. By 1952, Hopper had finished her program linker (originally called a compiler), which was written for the A-0 System. During her wartime service, she co-authored three papers based on her work on the Harvard Mark 1.

In 1954, Eckert–Mauchly chose Hopper to lead their department for automatic programming, and she led the release of some of the first compiled languages like FLOW-MATIC. In 1959, she participated in the CODASYL consortium, which consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967 the Navy recalled her to active duty. She retired from the Navy in 1986 and found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment Corporation, sharing her computing experiences.

The U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USSΒ Hopper was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC. During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Technology. On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

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πŸ”— Y Combinator cofounder was convicted under CFAA in 1990

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Business πŸ”— Biography/science and academia πŸ”— New York (state) πŸ”— Criminal Biography πŸ”— Computing/Computer Security πŸ”— New Jersey πŸ”— New York (state)/Cornell University πŸ”— Computing/Networking

Robert Tappan Morris (born November 8, 1965) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is best known for creating the Morris worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet.

Morris was prosecuted for releasing the worm, and became the first person convicted under the then-new Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He went on to co-found the online store Viaweb, one of the first web-based applications, and later the funding firm Y Combinatorβ€”both with Paul Graham.

He later joined the faculty in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received tenure in 2006. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2019.


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πŸ”— Kim Ung-yong: The man with the highest IQ

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Korea πŸ”— Biography/science and academia

Kim Ung-Yong (Hangul: κΉ€μ›…μš©; born March 8, 1962) is a South Korean professor and former child prodigy, who once held the Guinness World Record for highest IQ, at a score of 230+.

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πŸ”— Yuan Longping has died

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— China πŸ”— Biography/science and academia

Yuan Longping (Chinese: θ’ιš†εΉ³; September 7, 1930 – May 22, 2021) was a Chinese agronomist, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, known for developing the first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s.

Hybrid rice has since been grown in dozens of countries in Africa, America, and Asiaβ€”providing a robust food source in areas with a high risk of famine. For his contributions, Yuan is always called the "Father of Hybrid Rice" by the Chinese media. On May 22, 2021, Yuan Longping died of multiple organ failure at the age of 90.

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πŸ”— Fred Fish (Fish Disks)

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Biography/science and academia πŸ”— Computing/Software πŸ”— Computing/Free and open-source software πŸ”— Computing/Amiga πŸ”— Open

Fred Fish (November 4, 1952 – April 20, 2007) was a computer programmer notable for work on the GNU Debugger and his series of freeware disks for the Amiga.

The Amiga Library Disks – colloquially referred to as Fish Disks (a term coined by Perry Kivolowitz at a Jersey Amiga User Group meeting) – became the first national rallying point, a sort of early postal system. Fish would distribute his disks around the world in time for regional and local user group meetings, which in turn duplicated them for local distribution. Typically, only the cost of materials changed hands. The Fish Disk series ran from 1986 to 1994. In it, one can chart the growing sophistication of Amiga software and see the emergence of many software trends.

The Fish Disks were distributed at computer stores and Amiga enthusiast clubs. Contributors submitted applications and source code and the best of these each month were assembled and released as a diskette. Since the Internet was not yet in popular usage outside military and university circles, this was a primary way for enthusiasts to share work and ideas. He also initiated the "GeekGadgets" project, a GNU standard environment for AmigaOS and BeOS.

Fish worked for Cygnus Solutions in the 1990s before he left for Be Inc. in 1998.

In 1978, he self-published User Survival Guide for TI-58/59 Master Library, which was advertised in enthusiast newsletters covering the TI-59 programmable calculator.

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