Computer Science Superheroes
Mark Dean
Mark Dean was born March 2, 1957 in Jefferson City, Tennessee. He is currently alive and kicking today at 65 years old. Dean stood out as a gifted athlete and an extremely smart student. He graduated from Jefferson City High School. He graduated top of his class at the University of Tennessee (engineering). Later he earned his master's degree in electrical engineering from Florida Atlantic University (1982). 10 years later, he completed his doctorate in the same field at Stanford University (1992). In 1996 he was the first African American to be named an IBM fellow. He was honored with the Black Engineer of the Year President's Award and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (1997). In 2001, he was asked to be a member of the National Academy of Engineers. Mark Dean developed the new Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) systems bus. This invention allowed disk drives, printers, and monitors to be plugged directly into a computer. His work led to the development of the color PC monitor, and he led a team of engineers (IBM's Austin, Texas) to the creation of the gigahertz chip (able to do a billion calculations in a second). Mark Dean currently has an impressive number of 20 patents due to his contributions to technology.
Sources:
"https://www.biography.com/inventor/mark-dean"
"https://www.black-inventor.com/dr-mark-dean"
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/computer-science/dean_mark.html"
Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr was born November 9, 1914 in Vienna, Austria. She Lived for 85 years before dying on January 19, 2000 due to an ongoing heart condition. Lamarr didn’t go to college but studied acting in Berlin under Max Reinhardt. She also studied ballet and piano as a child. She was awarded with the Pioneer Award in 1997 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She also became the first woman to be awarded with the Invention Convention’s Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award. In 2014, after she died, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for frequency hopping technology. Lamarr created the "Secret Communicatfons System", now called WiFi. She also made other wireless cominications such as GPS and Blutooth communication Systems. Along with being a very important computer science superhero, Hedy was also an actress. I thought it is really impressive how she was able to contribute to computer science while still being able to act as well.
Sources:
"https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/hedy-lamarr"
Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage was born December 26th 1791 and died on October 18th 1871. He attended Trinity College in 1811 and taught at the university. He spent much of his life studying and calculating machinery. In 1824 he won the Gold Medal of Royal Astronomical Society. According to the University of Minnesota, “In 1821 Babbage invented the Difference Engine to compile mathematical tables. On completing it in 1832, he conceived the idea of a better machine that could perform not just one mathematical task but any kind of calculation. This was the Analytical Engine (1856), which was intended as a general symbol manipulator, and had some of the characteristics of today’s computers. Something I found interesting about Charles Babbage was that he is known as the “Father of Computing” for all of his efforts in the computer science comnnunity.
Sources:
"https://cse.umn.edu/cbi/who-was-charles-babbage"