A selection of interesting facts about the great IT people

George Bull

George Bull (1815 - 1864) - English professor of mathematics, whose work contributed to the creation of modern symbolic logic. His logic algebra , called Boolean algebra or Boolean logic (algebraic structure, augmented distribution lattice and the part of mathematics that studies such structures) is fundamental for the design of modern digital circuits. Buhl’s work was embodied in applications that he could never have imagined.

• The wife of George Boole is Mary Everest , niece of George Everest , inspector general of India, who in 1841 completed the creation of the triangulation system of this country, the author of the famous capital work “Report on the measurement of two arcs of the Indian meridian.” As already clear, the highest peak of the globe is named in his honor.
• He was awarded the knighthood in 1861.
• Has five daughters who continued the dynasty of scientists:
  
  • Alicia - specialized in the study of multidimensional spaces and received an honorary degree from the University of Groningen.
  • Lucy - became the first female professor in England to receive a department of chemistry.
  • Mary, married Charles Hinton , a mathematician, inventor, science fiction writer, author of The Case in Flatland, which describes some creatures living in a flat two-dimensional world. Of the Hinton offspring, three grandchildren became scientists: William and Joan - physicists, and Geward - an entomologist.
  • Margaret went down in history as the mother of a major English mathematician and mechanic, Jeffrey Taylor.
  • Ethel Lilian married the scientist Michael-Wilfred Voynich . Ethel Voynich wrote the novel “Gadfly”, which made her famous all over the world . Subsequently, several more novels, musical works, as well as a translation into English of poems by Taras Shevchenko followed .
  
  

John von Neumann

John von Neumann (1903 - 1957) is a Hungarian-American mathematician of Jewish origin who made an important contribution to quantum physics , quantum logic , functional analysis , set theory , computer science , economics and other branches of science. Best known as the forefather of modern computer architecture (the so-called von Neumann architecture ), the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics (von Neumann algebra), as well as a participant in the Manhattan project and as the creator of game theory and the concept of cellular automata .

• Neumann had an almost absolute memory. After many years, he could retell the pages of books he had read, immediately translating the text into English or German, and with slight delays into French or Italian.
• When Neumann spoke at the blackboard, he very quickly covered its entire surface with various formulas, and then very quickly erased everything, so that not everyone had time to understand the course of his reasoning.
• In 1928, Neumann wrote an article "On the theory of strategic games." In it, he proved the minimax theorem, which served as one of the foundations of the later theory of games. This article was the result of a study of the poker game of two partners and discussion of the optimal strategy for each of the players. However, this work did little to help Neumann himself when playing poker. So in 1944 in Los Alamos, he lost $ 10 to N. Metropolis immediately after he explained this theory to him. Having received the win, Metropolis bought Neumann and Morgenstern 's book “Game Theory and Economic Behavior” for $ 5, pasted another $ 5 on it and forced the author to sign the history of this loss on the book.
• During the development of the hydrogen bomb, von Neumann and Stanislav Ulam developed the independent statistical test method, now known as the Monte Carlo method . One of the main difficulties in developing this method was the lack of random number generators at that time. Then Neumann suggested using one of the roulettes at Monte Carlo casino, where the best roulettes were, and, therefore, the best sequences of random numbers were generated for generating sequences of random numbers. The military department agreed to rent one of these devices - Ulam and Neumann had enough to play roulette at public expense, and they called their method in memory of this the Monte Carlo method.
• They wrote about Neumann that he could go to bed with an unresolved problem, and wake up at three in the morning with a ready answer. Then he went to the phone and called his staff. Therefore, one of Neumann's demands on his employees was their willingness to be woken up in the middle of the night.
• During a trip in a car, Neumann could get so carried away with solving a problem that he lost orientation in space and needed to be clarified.
• Once, while working on a nuclear project in Los Alamos, it took some very complicated calculation. For the case come from Enrico Fermi , Richard Feynman and John von Neumann. Fermi took his favorite slide rule, pencil and a bunch of sheets of paper. Feynman surrounded himself with various reference books, turned on an electric calculator (the fastest of those that existed at that time), and went deeper into the calculations. Neumann counted in the mind. The results, which almost coincided, they got at the same time.

Alan Matheson Turing

Alan Matheson Turing (1912 - 1954) - English mathematician, logician, cryptographer, who had a significant impact on the development of computer science. He is considered the founder of computer science, who laid its mathematical foundations in the 1936 article “On Computable Numbers” (On Computable Numbers). The abstract computing "Turing Machine" proposed by him in 1936 made it possible to formalize the concept of an algorithm and is still used in many theoretical and practical studies.

• Turing was homosexual.
• He made an enormous contribution to the British project for breaking the Nazi encryption machine “Enigma” during World War II.
• In 1950, Alan Turing proposed the famous game called The Imitation Game. She is now better known as the Turing Test .
• Once they robbed the house of Alan Turing, and the scientist called the police. Unfortunately, the police found evidence of the owner’s homosexuality in the house and, instead of searching for thieves, arrested Turing himself, because of which he lost the right to work with secret documents and was suspended from his work. The court made it possible for Turing to choose between imprisonment and injection of sex hormones. Turing chose the second. The effect was catastrophic: his breasts grew. In 1954, Turing, unable to bear the agony of anguish, committed suicide - ate an apple stuffed with cyanide.
• The Apple logo is a tribute to Turing.

Claude Elwood Shannon

Claude Elwood Shannon (1916 - 2001) - American engineer and mathematician. His works are a synthesis of mathematical ideas with a specific analysis of the extremely complex problems of their technical implementation. He is the founder of the theory of information that has found application in modern high-tech communication systems. Shannon made an enormous contribution to the theory of probability schemes, the theory of automata, and the theory of control systems - the fields of science that are part of the concept of cybernetics .

• Claude Shannon and the godfather of blackjack card counting technique Edward Thorpe were good friends and partners: many of Thorpe's theories were proved by Shannon and vice versa.
• On the advice of John von Neumann, Shannon determined the amount of information through entropy . As a result, he proved his theorem on the throughput of noisy communication channels .
• One of the first Shannon expressed the idea that machines can play games and self-learn. In 1950, he made a mechanical remotely controlled electronic circuit mouse named Theseus, who was learning to find a way out of the maze.
• Shannon was very keen on juggling. On his retirement, he built several juggling machines and even created a general theory of juggling, which, however, did not help him break his personal record - juggling with four balls.
• Shannon loved to ride the unicycle on the Bell Labs corridors while juggling.
• The most unusual devices created by Shannon are seven chess machines, a circus pole with a spring and a gasoline engine, a folding knife with a hundred blades, a double unicycle, a juggling dummy and a computer calculating in the Roman numeral system.

Donald Erwin Knut

Donald Erwin Knuth (1938) - American scientist, teacher and ideologist of programming, author of 19 monographs (including a number of classic books on programming) and more than 160 articles, developer of several well-known software technologies. He is the author of a world-famous series of books devoted to basic algorithms and methods of computational mathematics, as well as the creator of desktop publishing systems TEX and METAFONT , intended for the collection and layout of books devoted to technical topics (primarily physical and mathematical).

• Knut admits that he has an inferiority complex. As he said, this explains that he always worked hard. In high school, Milwaukee Lutheran High School, he was worried that low math grades could prevent him from going to college, but that was an incomprehensible concern because he graduated from high school with the highest ratio of all time - 97.5%. Because of the same fear at the Kei Institute of Technology, Knut in extra time studied zealously for differential and integral calculus and analytic geometry.
• At the institute, when he first worked with a computer, Knut really caught on fire with the new IBM 650, because of which he missed a date with his future wife, as he was too carried away by debugging. The “Art of Programming," Knut dedicated to this particular computer.
• Knut was the manager of the basketball team. He developed a formula that calculated everyone's contribution to the game, not only by the number of points he brought to the team.
• Music is of great interest to him. He became the designer of a 1000-pipe baroque organ for the Lutheran Church in Menlo Park, California, and built a smaller version for his home.
• Knut no longer pays $ 2 56 cents for every mistake found in his book. © Koshelew
• Donald Knut knows Russian. © middle

Bill Gates

Bill Gates (William Henry Gates III, 1955) is chairman and chief software architect at Microsoft Corporation , a leading global manufacturer of personal computer software. The main merit of Bill Gates is that for decades to come he foresaw the possibility of obtaining superprofits from what cannot be touched, that which is exclusively a product of the activity of the human mind - computer programs.

• Gates loves cars, motor boats, and poker.
• Gates is passionate about work to manicity, a passion for competition carries him more money.
• He never ate at home because he did not want to waste time cooking.
• Bill Gates received his first major fee at age 15 for a program to regulate traffic. The fee amounted to 20 thousand dollars. And at 38, he was already selling a million copies of his Windows a month.
• Gates was expelled from Harvard University for poor performance. Many years later (after his fortune went over several billion dollars), the Harvard administration recognized him as his graduate and issued a diploma.
• As a child, Bill loved to ride a swing. If now he has to think, he starts to ride.
• At 13, Bill Gates and his friends hacked into a school computer and gained access to classified information. Instead of being punished, Seattle's computer center hired Gates to test their programs.
• Parents were frightened by Gates’s craving for computers and even forbade him from approaching this “hellish machine”. The following year, Bill read biographies of great people. He was interested in the way of thinking of historical figures.
• At the dawn of the World Wide Web, Gates said: “The Internet is hopeless.” Within a few years, he threw his best programmers onto this front line.
• Gates wrote his first program, which aided the effective planning of class hours, at school. He used the program to enroll in a class with the prettiest girls.
• Bill Gates became a billionaire at the age of 31. If he were a country, he would occupy thirty-seventh place in the list of the richest countries in the world.
• It has been estimated that Bill earns $ 250 per second, that is, $ 21.6 million per day, or $ 7.8 billion per year. If he gives out to every person on Earth fifteen dollars, then he will have another 5 million left. And if he lost one dollar each time Windows hung, his condition would have been zero after three years.
• He spent about thirty billion dollars of his money on charity.
• He is married and has three children. He forbids his children to play on the Xbox 360.

Timothy John Berners-Lee

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (1955) is a British scientist, inventor of URI , URL , HTTP , HTML , inventor of the World Wide Web (together with Robert Cayo ) and current head of the World Wide Web Consortium. The author of the concept of the semantic web. The author of many other developments in the field of information technology.

• There was a sad incident at the Royal College of Oxford University with Tim: he was deprived of access to a computer in a nuclear physics laboratory because he played toys that had nothing to do with science at inopportune time. Something similar happened once with another negligent student. His name was Bill Gates.
• Once, Tim and his friend were caught during a hacker attack, for which they were deprived of the right to use all university computers this time. Tim did not accept excommunication from the device to which he was burning with passion. This passion generated a powerful creative impulse, and the guy designed his own personal computer from an old TV, a chip-sign generator, bought for two microprocessor scholarships and found on the dump of a calculator.
• Tim talks very quickly and keeping up with his thoughts is completely impossible. When he lived in Geneva, his Swiss colleagues began to contact him exclusively in French in order to slightly reduce the pace of conversation.
• Once he was giving a lecture in front of a huge audience, and unexpectedly there were problems with the computer. Tim dealt with them and, as if in between, said: “Would I stand here in front of you if everything worked as it should?”
• Tim and his wife Nancy Carlson hate when they stick their nose in their family affairs. For more information about their family life, they urge you to contact a lawyer.
• After the Americans simplified Tim Cailliagu's right-hand surname to Cayo, claims began to appear on various sources that the web was created by Chinese Li and Japanese Cayo.
• In a sense, it opposes the commercialization of the World Wide Web. He is interested in the network itself, not its use. In one of his interviews, Berners-Lee admitted that "he is almost physically suffering from all-consuming garbage on the Web."

References:

ru.wikipedia.org
abhoc.com
arti-ex.ru
scorp.ru
habrahabr.ru
factopedia.ru
joker.vulanude.ru
peoples.ru

P. S .: I wanted to write more about Philip Wadler , but somehow there was nothing interesting about him; maybe I was looking badly.
PPS: I will be pleased to add the interesting facts and new personalities that you found.