Often, discoveries and innovations are the work of multiple people, resulting from continual improvements over time. However, certain individuals are remembered for making significant contributions to the birth or development of a field or technology.[1] These individuals may often be described as the "father" or "mother" of a particular field or invention.
Founding father of modern aerodynamics; first to identify the four aerodynamic forces of flight—weight, lift, drag, and thrust; modern airplane design is based on those discoveries
The development of biomolecular motors for powering inorganic nanodevices while at Cornell and muscle-driven self-assembled nanodevices while at UCLA.[35]
Ismail al-Jazari Invented the first programmable humanoid robot in 1206[54] The Bānu Musā brothers invented an automatic flute which may have been the first programmable machine
In his 2004 memoir, "A Programmer's Story: The Life of a Computer Pioneer", Per Brinch Hansen wrote that he used "Cooperating Sequential Processes" to guide his work implementing multiprogramming on the RC 4000, and described it saying, "One of the great works in computer programming, this masterpiece laid the conceptual foundation for concurrent programming."
Became "intrigued" with Turing's universal machine and later emphasised the importance of the stored-program concept for electronic computing (1945), including the possibility of allowing the machine to modify its own program in useful ways while running. John von Neumann is also considered to be the inventor of flowchart.
Invented the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) in 1946. ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.
Recognized by historians as the writer of the world's first computer program which was for the Charles BabbageAnalytical Engine, but was never completed.
Recognized by historians and the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame for independently inventing the concept of digital packet switching used in modern computer networking including the Internet.[73] Baran published a series of briefings and papers about dividing information into "message blocks" and sending it over distributed networks between 1960 and 1964.[74][75] Davies conceived of and named the concept of packet switching in data communication networks in 1965.[76][77] Many of the wide-area packet-switched networks built in the 1970s were similar "in nearly all respects" to Davies' original 1965 design.[78]
The original Pentium (P5) was developed by a team of engineers, including John H. Crawford, chief architect of the original 386,[88] and Donald Alpert, who managed the architectural team. Dror Avnon managed the design of the FPU.[89] Dham was general manager of the P5 group.[90] Some media sources have called him the "father of the Pentium".
Invented the VisiCalc spreadsheet program, which was the killer application of the Apple II. VisiCalc is considered the first killer app in computer history.[98]
Referred so by Bernard Humbert of the Horology School of Bienne on his 1990 book The Chronograph as Graham was the first to construct a horological mechanism
Alexeyev revolutionised the shipbuilding industry (though in secrecy) by inventing craft that use ground effect, whereby a wing traveling close to the ground is provided with a better lift-drag ratio - thereby enabling a combination of greater aircraft weight for less power and/or enhanced fuel economy.
Von Ohain´s design, an axial-flow engine, as opposed to Whittle's centrifugal flow engine, was eventually adopted by most manufacturers by the 1950s.[120]
Russian chemist, Dmitri Mendeleev, arranged the elements in an order that we would now recognise. He realised that the physical and chemical properties of elements were related to their atomic mass in a 'periodic' way, and arranged them so that groups of elements with similar properties fell into vertical columns in his table.
Fessenden is credited as the first to broadcast radio signals on Christmas Eve, 1906. Sarnoff proposed a chain of radio stations to Marconi's associates in 1915.
Co-inventors of the electronic television, Farnsworth invented the Image dissector while Zworykin created the Iconoscope, both fully electronic forms of television. Logie Baird invented the world's first working television system, also the first electronic color television system. Fundamental to Baird's system was the Nipkow disk, invented by Paul Gotlieb Nipkow.[137]
Famed for building Bigfoot, which was the first to be capable of driving over cars and subsequently became one of the most famous monster truck in history.
In 1994, Marlin made final drive ratios of 200:1 and lower possible in typical off road vehicles (primarily Toyota Hilux trucks) and changed the way people access remote off-roading destinations.
A lifetime employee of BMW, he evolutionized the turbocharged engine into automobile use. He also developed the first European turbocharged car, the racing 1969 BMW 2002 TiK that evolved into the production 1972 2002 Turbo.
^Bernstein, Barton J: "Introduction" to The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories (expanded edition), by Leo Szilard. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992, p. 5: "Its author, Leo Szilard, now dead nearly three decades, was a Hungarian émigré scientist and one of many putative fathers of the A-bomb."
^"'Father of H-Bomb' Agrees to Rally Scientific Talent." The New York Times, 1965-12-31, p. 19. Story opens: "Albany, December 30—Governor Rockefeller will make an intensified attack on air pollution with the help of Dr. Edward Teller, the 'father of the hydrogen bomb.'"
^Jeffries, John (2001). Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Fordham Univ Press. p. 162. ISBN978-0-8232-2110-3. 'Admiral Rickover', said Powell, '"father of the atomic submarine", is a great naval officer... It is not equally clear that he is a careful and thorough student of American education.'
^"Submarine Range Called Unlimited; Rickover Says Atomic Craft Can Cruise Under Ice To North Pole and Beyond," The New York Times, 1957-12-06, p. 33: "The admiral, who is often called the 'Father of the Atomic Submarine'..."
^Galantin, I. J. (1997). Submarine Admiral: From Battlewagons to Ballistic Missiles. University of Illinois Press. ISBN978-0-252-06675-7., p. 217: "Chet Holifield... member of the JCAE... said 'Of all the men I dealt with in public service, at least one will go down in history: Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy.'"
^John Masefield, The Old Front Line, Pen & Sword Books Limited - 2006, pages 59-60
^"Sir George Carley (British Inventor and Scientist)". Britannica. Retrieved 2009-07-26. English pioneer of aerial navigation and aeronautical engineering and designer of the first successful glider to carry a human being aloft.
^"The Pioneers: Aviation and Airmodelling". Retrieved 2009-07-26. Sir George Cayley, is sometimes called the 'Father of Aviation'. A pioneer in his field, he is credited with the first major breakthrough in heavier-than-air flight. He was the first to identify the four aerodynamic forces of flight—weight, lift, drag, and thrust—and their relationship and also the first to build a successful human carrying glider.
^Lynn Townsend White, Jr. (Spring, 1961). "Eilmer of Malmesbury, an Eleventh Century Aviator: A Case Study of Technological Innovation, Its Context and Tradition", Technology and Culture2 (2), p. 97–111 [100–101]
^Montemagno, Carlo D.; Craighead, Harold G.; Olkhovets, Anatoli G.; Neves, Hercules P.; Bachand, George D.; Soong, Ricky K. (2000-11-24). "Powering an Inorganic Nanodevice with a Biomolecular Motor". Science. 290 (5496): 1555–1558. Bibcode:2000Sci...290.1555S. doi:10.1126/science.290.5496.1555. PMID11090349.
^Belzer, Belzer (1977). Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology: Volume 7 - Curve Fitting to Early Development... Marcel Dekker. ISBN978-0-262-73009-9., p. 55: "It is probably not an accident that the 'father of cybernetics,' Norbert Wiener, …"
^Wiener, Norbert (1965) [1948]. Cybernetics, Second Edition: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press. ISBN978-0-8247-2257-9. (Wiener is credited with coining the term in its common modern usage)
^Lane, Nick (6 March 2015). "The Unseen World: Reflections on Leeuwenhoek (1677) 'Concerning Little Animal'." Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2015 Apr; 370 (1666): doi:10.1098/rstb.2014.0344
^Roth, Bernard (2007). "Ferdinand Freudenstein (1926–2006)". Life and career of Ferdinand Freudenstein. History of Mechanism and Machine Science. Vol. 1. pp. 151–181. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6366-4_7. ISBN978-1-4020-6365-7.
^Ellis, Roger (2001). Who's Who in Victorian Britain. Stackpole Books. p. 116. ISBN978-0-8117-1640-6. Retrieved 2013-08-21. cites book title: "A. H. Booth: William Henry Fox Talbot: father of photography, 1965"
^Booth, Martin (1999). Opium: A History. St. Martin's Press. p. 30. ISBN978-0-312-20667-3. Retrieved 2013-08-21. Robert Hall, the divine, was addicted [to opium], as was Thomas Wedgwood, the father of photography.
^Marco Ceccarelli, ed. (2009). Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science: Their Contributions and Legacies, Part 2. Springer. p. 13. ISBN9789048123452. Retrieved 2013-08-20. Other chapters of al-Jazari's work describe fountains and musical automata which are of interest mainly because the flow of water in them alternated from one large tank to another at hourly or half-hourly intervals. Several ingenious devices for hydraulic switching were used to achieve this operation (Rosheim 1994). These revolutionary machines owed him the title of the father of robotics (Chapius and Droz 1958; Nocks 2007).
^Diana Darke (2010). Syria, 2nd. Bradt Travel Guides. p. 98. ISBN9781841623146. Retrieved 2013-08-21. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the history of humankind was the crankshaft, invented by the Muslim engineer Al-Jazari. He devised it to raise water for irrigation. He also invented or refined the use of valves and pistons, and was the father of robotics.
^Koetsier, Teun (2001), "On the prehistory of programmable machines: musical automata, looms, calculators", Mechanism and Machine Theory, Elsevier, 36 (5): 589–603, doi:10.1016/S0094-114X(01)00005-2
^Marco Ceccarelli, ed. (2009). "Al-Jazari". Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science: Their Contributions and Legacies, Part 2. Springer. p. 4. ISBN9789048123452. Retrieved 2013-08-20. Others gave amusement and aesthetic pleasure to the members of royal circles, which led him to invent the first programmable humanoid robot in 1206. Al-Jazari's robot was a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties (Margaret 2006; Franchi and Güzeldere 2005).
^BPB Publications. My Big Book of Computers 6. Ratna Sagar. p. 7. ISBN9788170708827. Retrieved 2012-07-04. Charles Babbage is called the Father of Computers, because the concepts he pioneered in his engine later formed the basis of modern computers.
^
Gray, Paul (1999-03-29). "Alan Turing - Time 100 People of the Century". Time. Archived from the original on 2000-07-09. Retrieved 2009-06-13. The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine
^Although it's a title he objects to (see Interview with Vinton CerfArchived 2007-06-09 at the Wayback Machine, from a January 2006 article in Government Computer News), Cerf is willing to call himself one of the Internet's fathers, citing Bob Kahn in particularly as being someone with whom he should share that title.
^Roberts, Lawrence G. (November 1978). "The Evolution of Packet Switching". Archived from the original on 2016-03-24. Retrieved 2017-09-05. Almost immediately after the 1965 meeting, Donald Davies conceived of the details of a store-and-forward packet switching system; Roberts, Lawrence G. (May 1995). "The ARPANET & Computer Networks". Archived from the original on 2016-03-24. Retrieved 2016-04-13. Then in June 1966, Davies wrote a second internal paper, "Proposal for a Digital Communication Network" In which he coined the word packet,- a small sub part of the message the user wants to send, and also introduced the concept of an "Interface computer" to sit between the user equipment and the packet network.
^Roberts, Lawrence G. (November 1978). "The Evolution of Packet Switching"(PDF). IEEE Invited Paper. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2018-12-31. Retrieved 2017-09-10. In nearly all respects, Davies' original proposal, developed in late 1965, was similar to the actual networks being built today.
^Trevor Harris, University of Wales (2009). "Who is the Father of the Internet? The Case for Donald Davies". Variety in Mass Communication Research. Archived from the original on 2021-10-10. Retrieved 2020-01-23. Dr Willis H. Ware, Senior Computer Scientist and Research at the RAND Corporation, notes that Davies (and others) were troubled by what they regarded as in appropriate claims on the invention of packet switching
^Katie Hafner (2001-11-08), "A Paternity Dispute Divides Net Pioneers", New York Times, The Internet is really the work of a thousand people," Mr. Baran said. "And of all the stories about what different people have done, all the pieces fit together. It's just this one little case that seems to be an aberration.
^Cooper, Alan, Why I am called "the Father of Visual Basic"Archived 1996-11-01 at the Wayback Machine "Mitchell Waite called me the "father of Visual Basic" in the foreword to what I believe was the first book ever published for VB, called the Visual Basic How-To (now in its second edition, published by The Waite Group Press). I thought the appellation was an appropriate one, and frequently use the quoted phrase as my one-line biography."
^Zuill, William S. (2001): The Forgotten Father of Radio", American Heritage of Science and Technology, 17 (1) 40–47, as cited in Silverman, Steve (2003). Lindbergh's Artificial Heart: More Fascinating True Stories From Einstein's Refrigerator. Andrews McMeel Publishing. ISBN978-0-7407-3340-6. p. 160
^Van Meggelen, Jim; Jared Smith; Leif Madsen (2005). Asterisk: The Future of Telephony. O'Reilly. ISBN978-0-596-00962-5., p. 190: "Although Alexander Graham Bell is most famously remembered as the father of the telephone, the reality is that during the latter half of the 1800s dozens of minds were at work on the project of carrying voice over telegraph lines."
^"Beim Vater des Fernsehens—Was der siebzigjährige Paul Nipkow erzählt". Neues Wiener Journal. 23 August 1930.
^"Philo Farnsworth". Society of Television Engineers. Archived from the original on 2007-07-13. Retrieved 2013-08-21. Isn't it about time that Philo Farnsworth gets some credit???
^"Zworykin at Museum.TV". Retrieved 2008-03-03. inventor Vladimir Zworykin is often described as "the father of television".
^"John Logie Baird: TV Inventor". Retrieved 2009-07-26. John Logie Baird invented Television in 1926. His initial TV system was electro-mechanical. He (later) embraced electronic TV and developed the world's first color television system.
^VW Trends - TEN: The Enthusiast Network (2009-03-26). "Who's Who of Volkswagen". VW Trends. Archived from the original on 2012-04-15. Retrieved 2016-01-10.
^Steil, Tim (2000). Route 66. MBI Publishing Company. p. 18. ISBN978-0-7603-0747-2. Avery, though dubbed the 'Father of Route 66' by some, was a political appointee who also left office the next year.
^Watson, Rollin J. (2002). The School As a Safe Haven. Bergen Garvey/Greenwood. p. 30. ISBN978-0-89789-900-0. The modern school bus began in a conference in 1939 called by Frank W. Cyr, the 'Father of the Yellow School' bus, who was a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. At that meeting, Cyr urged the standardization of the school bus. Participants came up with the standard yellow color and some basic construction standards. Cyr had... found that children were riding in all sorts of vehicles—one district, he found, was painting their buses red, white, and blue to instill patriotism.
