The Most Famous
COMPUTER SCIENTISTS from Canada
This page contains a list of the greatest Canadian Computer Scientists. The pantheon dataset contains 245 Computer Scientists, 7 of which were born in Canada. This makes Canada the birth place of the 3rd most number of Computer Scientists behind United States, and United Kingdom.
Top 8
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Canadian Computer Scientists of all time. This list of famous Canadian Computer Scientists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. James Gosling (b. 1955)
With an HPI of 54.41, James Gosling is the most famous Canadian Computer Scientist. His biography has been translated into 53 different languages on wikipedia.
James Arthur Gosling (born 19 May 1955) is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java programming language. Gosling was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 for the conception and development of the architecture for the Java programming language and for contributions to window systems.
2. Brian Kernighan (b. 1942)
With an HPI of 54.32, Brian Kernighan is the 2nd most famous Canadian Computer Scientist. His biography has been translated into 40 different languages.
Brian Wilson Kernighan (; born January 30, 1942) is a Canadian computer scientist. He worked at Bell Labs and contributed to the development of Unix alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan's name became widely known through co-authorship of the first book on the C programming language (The C Programming Language) with Dennis Ritchie. Kernighan affirmed that he had no part in the design of the C language ("it's entirely Dennis Ritchie's work"). Kernighan authored many Unix programs, including ditroff. He is coauthor of the AWK and AMPL programming languages. The "K" of K&R C and of AWK both stand for "Kernighan". In collaboration with Shen Lin he devised well-known heuristics for two NP-complete optimization problems: graph partitioning and the travelling salesman problem. In a display of authorial equity, the former is usually called the Kernighan–Lin algorithm, while the latter is known as the Lin–Kernighan heuristic. Kernighan has been a professor of computer science at Princeton University since 2000 and is the director of undergraduate studies in the department of computer science. In 2015, he co-authored the book The Go Programming Language.
3. Alfred Aho (b. 1941)
With an HPI of 53.21, Alfred Aho is the 3rd most famous Canadian Computer Scientist. His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.
Alfred Vaino Aho (born August 9, 1941) is a Canadian computer scientist best known for his work on programming languages, compilers, and related algorithms, and his textbooks on the art and science of computer programming. Aho was elected into the National Academy of Engineering in 1999 for his contributions to the fields of algorithms and programming tools. He and his long-time collaborator Jeffrey Ullman are the recipients of the 2020 Turing Award, generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science.
4. John Draper (b. 1943)
With an HPI of 50.18, John Draper is the 4th most famous Canadian Computer Scientist. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.
John Thomas Draper (born March 11, 1943), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch, or Crunchman (after the Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal mascot), is an American computer programmer and former phone phreak. He is a widely known figure within the computer programming world and the hacker and security community, and generally lives a nomadic lifestyle.
5. Kenneth E. Iverson (1920 - 2004)
With an HPI of 48.57, Kenneth E. Iverson is the 5th most famous Canadian Computer Scientist. His biography has been translated into 30 different languages.
Kenneth Eugene Iverson (17 December 1920 – 19 October 2004) was a Canadian computer scientist noted for the development of the programming language APL. He was honored with the Turing Award in 1979 "for his pioneering effort in programming languages and mathematical notation resulting in what the computing field now knows as APL; for his contributions to the implementation of interactive systems, to educational uses of APL, and to programming language theory and practice".
6. Rob Pike (b. 1956)
With an HPI of 43.38, Rob Pike is the 6th most famous Canadian Computer Scientist. His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.
Robert Pike (born 1956) is a Canadian programmer and author. He is best known for his work on the Go programming language while working at Google and the Plan 9 operating system while working at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the Unix team. Pike wrote the first window system for Unix in 1981. He is the sole inventor named in the US patent for overlapping windows on a computer display. With Brian Kernighan, he is the co-author of The Practice of Programming and The Unix Programming Environment. With Ken Thompson, he is the co-creator of UTF-8 character encoding.
7. Gilles Brassard (b. 1955)
With an HPI of 39.95, Gilles Brassard is the 7th most famous Canadian Computer Scientist. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Gilles Brassard, is a faculty member of the Université de Montréal, where he has been a Full Professor since 1988 and Canada Research Chair since 2001.
8. Maria Klawe (b. 1951)
With an HPI of 37.65, Maria Klawe is the 8th most famous Canadian Computer Scientist. Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.
Maria Margaret Klawe ( KLAH-vay; born 1951) is a computer scientist and served as the fifth president of Harvey Mudd College from 2006 to 2023. Born in Toronto in 1951, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2009. She was previously Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. She is known for her advocacy for women in STEM fields.
People
Pantheon has 8 people classified as Canadian computer scientists born between 1920 and 1956. Of these 8, 7 (87.50%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Canadian computer scientists include James Gosling, Brian Kernighan, and Alfred Aho. The most famous deceased Canadian computer scientists include Kenneth E. Iverson. As of April 2024, 1 new Canadian computer scientists have been added to Pantheon including Gilles Brassard.
Living Canadian Computer Scientists
Go to all Rankings
James Gosling
1955 - Present
HPI: 54.41
Brian Kernighan
1942 - Present
HPI: 54.32
Alfred Aho
1941 - Present
HPI: 53.21
John Draper
1943 - Present
HPI: 50.18
Rob Pike
1956 - Present
HPI: 43.38
Gilles Brassard
1955 - Present
HPI: 39.95
Maria Klawe
1951 - Present
HPI: 37.65
