COMPUTER SCIENTISTS from Norway

Top 4

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Norwegian Computer Scientists of all time. This list of famous Norwegian Computer Scientists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Ole-Johan Dahl (1931 - 2002)

With an HPI of 53.33, Ole-Johan Dahl is the most famous Norwegian Computer Scientist.  His biography has been translated into 36 different languages on wikipedia.

Ole-Johan Dahl (12 October 1931 – 29 June 2002) was a Norwegian computer scientist. Dahl was a professor of computer science at the University of Oslo and is considered to be one of the fathers of Simula and object-oriented programming along with Kristen Nygaard.

2. Kristen Nygaard (1926 - 2002)

With an HPI of 49.41, Kristen Nygaard is the 2nd most famous Norwegian Computer Scientist.  His biography has been translated into 31 different languages.

Kristen Nygaard (27 August 1926 – 10 August 2002) was a Norwegian computer scientist, programming language pioneer, and politician. Internationally, Nygaard is acknowledged as the co-inventor of object-oriented programming and the programming language Simula with Ole-Johan Dahl in the 1960s. Nygaard and Dahl received the 2001 A. M. Turing Award for their contribution to computer science.

3. Geir Ivarsøy (1957 - 2006)

With an HPI of 41.75, Geir Ivarsøy is the 3rd most famous Norwegian Computer Scientist.  His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

Geir Ivarsøy (June 27, 1957 – March 9, 2006) was the lead programmer at Opera Software. He and Jon von Tetzchner were part of a research group at the Norwegian state phone company (now known as Telenor) where they developed browsing software called MultiTorg Opera. The project was abandoned by Telenor, but in 1995 Geir and Jon obtained the rights to the software, formed a company of their own, and continued working on it. Now known simply as Opera, the browser has become very popular despite the competition. Opera Software has grown to more than 500 employees since it first moved to its present offices in Oslo. At a board meeting in January 2004, Geir Ivarsøy announced his wish to resign as a board member in Opera Software, though he remained active in the company even after that. In June 2005, he was elected as a member of the Nomination Committee of the company. Ivarsøy died in March 2006 of cancer. Opera distributions starting with Version 9 state "In memory of Geir Ivarsøy" on their opera:about page.

4. Jon Lech Johansen (b. 1983)

With an HPI of 32.63, Jon Lech Johansen is the 4th most famous Norwegian Computer Scientist.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Jon Lech Johansen (born November 18, 1983, in Harstad, Norway), also known as DVD Jon, is a Norwegian programmer who has worked on reverse engineering data formats. He wrote the DeCSS software, which decodes the Content Scramble System used for DVD licensing enforcement. Johansen is a self-trained software engineer, who quit high school during his first year to spend more time with the DeCSS case. He moved to the United States and worked as a software engineer from October 2005 until November 2006. He then moved to Norway but moved back to the United States in June 2007.