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Technology & Building

Inventors, engineers and architects who built the machines, networks and skylines.

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Steve Jobs 1955–2011Technology & InventionCo-founder of Apple who revolutionized personal computing, music, and mobile communications.Thomas Edison 1847–1931Technology & InventionInventor and scientist whose research laboratory model and electrical innovations transformed modern life.Alexander Graham Bell 1847–1922Technology & InventionInventor of the telephone and founder of AT&T, transforming global communication.Elon Musk b. 1971Technology & InventionEngineer and entrepreneur whose companies have advanced electric vehicles, reusable rockets, and neural interfaces.Orville Wright 1871–1948Technology & InventionCo-inventor of the first successful powered airplane, achieving human flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903.Bill Gates b. 1955Technology & InventionCo-founder of Microsoft who, through the Gates Foundation, has donated billions to global health and education.Wilbur Wright 1867–1912Technology & InventionCo-inventor of the first successful powered airplane and pioneer of aeronautical engineering.Nikola Tesla 1856–1943Technology & InventionSerbian-American inventor who developed alternating current electrical systems and numerous electrical innovations.Frank Lloyd Wright 1867–1959Engineering & ArchitectureArchitect and engineer whose organic architecture, including Fallingwater, reshaped the built environment.Mark Zuckerberg b. 1984Technology & InventionCo-founder of Facebook who built the world's largest social media platform and reshaped global communication.Eli Whitney 1765–1825Technology & InventionInventor of the cotton gin, which revolutionized Southern agriculture and had profound economic impacts.Samuel Morse 1791–1872Technology & InventionPainter and inventor who developed the telegraph and Morse code, enabling instant long-distance communication.Frederick Law Olmsted 1822–1903Engineering & ArchitectureLandscape architect who designed Central Park and established public parks as essential American civic infrastructure.Tim Berners-Lee b. 1955Technology & InventionBritish-American computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web, revolutionizing global information sharing.Wernher von Braun 1912–1977Engineering & ArchitectureGerman-American aerospace engineer who led the development of the Saturn V rocket that took humans to the Moon.Robert Fulton 1765–1815Engineering & ArchitectureEngineer and inventor whose steamboat Clermont revolutionized American river transportation.Steve Wozniak b. 1950Technology & InventionCo-founder of Apple who designed the Apple I and Apple II computers, sparking the personal computer revolution.Larry Page b. 1973Technology & InventionCo-founder of Google whose search algorithm became the foundation of the modern internet economy.Frank Gehry 1929–2025Engineering & ArchitectureDeveloped a sculptural architectural language seen in the Walt Disney Concert Hall and other landmarks.George Westinghouse 1846–1914Engineering & ArchitectureEngineer and industrialist who championed alternating current and founded the Westinghouse Electric Company.Sergey Brin b. 1973Technology & InventionCo-founder of Google who helped develop the PageRank algorithm and expanded into AI and autonomous vehicles.Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 1886–1969Engineering & ArchitectureDirected architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology and defined American modernist steel-and-glass buildings.Jane Jacobs 1916–2006Engineering & ArchitectureWriter and activist whose defense of mixed, walkable neighborhoods transformed urban planning.Gordon Moore 1929–2023Technology & InventionCo-founder of Intel whose observation became Moore's Law, driving decades of semiconductor progress.I. M. Pei 1917–2019Engineering & ArchitectureArchitect whose monumental modern buildings reshaped American civic and cultural architecture.Grace Hopper 1906–1992Technology & InventionComputer scientist and Navy rear admiral who helped develop early programming languages and computing.Robert Moses 1888–1981Engineering & ArchitectureMaster builder whose roads, parks, and public works reshaped metropolitan New York while displacing communities and entrenching car dependence.Claude Shannon 1916–2001Technology & InventionMathematician and engineer who founded information theory, the basis of all digital communication.Louis Sullivan 1856–1924Engineering & ArchitectureArchitect whose skyscraper designs and “form follows function” principle helped define modern architecture.Paul Allen 1953–2018Technology & InventionCo-founder of Microsoft who later invested in space, sports, and scientific research through the Allen Institute.Buckminster Fuller 1895–1983Engineering & ArchitecturePopularized the geodesic dome and promoted resource-efficient structural design.Robert Noyce 1927–1990Technology & InventionCo-inventor of the integrated circuit and co-founder of Intel, earning him the title Mayor of Silicon Valley.Hedy Lamarr 1914–2000Technology & InventionActress and inventor who co-developed frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology, the basis for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.Sam Altman b. 1985Technology & InventionTechnology executive and investor whose leadership in generative artificial intelligence has had major but still-unsettled historical consequences.Robert H. Goddard 1882–1945Technology & InventionBuilt and launched the first liquid-fueled rocket and patented foundational rocket propulsion methods.Eero Saarinen 1910–1961Engineering & ArchitectureArchitect whose expressive buildings and furniture became icons of postwar American modernism.William Shockley 1910–1989Technology & InventionCo-inventor of the transistor at Bell Labs, earning the Nobel Prize and launching the semiconductor age.Daniel Burnham 1846–1912Engineering & ArchitectureArchitect and planner whose City Beautiful vision shaped downtowns, civic centers, and urban planning.Cyrus McCormick 1809–1884Technology & InventionInventor of the mechanical reaper that transformed agriculture and fed a growing nation.Philip Johnson 1906–2005Engineering & ArchitectureNamed the International Style at MoMA, then built it and publicly repudiated it.Maya Lin b. 1959Engineering & ArchitectureDesigner of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial whose work transformed American memorial architecture.DPDavid Packard 1912–1996Technology & InventionBuilt Hewlett-Packard into a corporation and wrote the management code Silicon Valley copied.Jensen Huang b. 1963Technology & InventionCo-founder and CEO of NVIDIA whose GPUs became the engine of the AI revolution.Satya Nadella b. 1967Technology & InventionCEO of Microsoft who pivoted the company toward cloud computing and AI, driving massive growth.Vannevar Bush 1890–1974Technology & InventionBuilt the differential analyzer and directed U.S. wartime research while proposing the Memex concept.Louis Kahn 1901–1974Engineering & ArchitectureThe Salk Institute, the Kimbell and the National Assembly at Dhaka, from an architect who began at 50.Marvin Minsky 1927–2016Technology & InventionBuilt the first neural network learning machine, then wrote the book blamed for burying the idea.Frederick Winslow Taylor 1856–1915Engineering & ArchitectureMechanical engineer who pioneered scientific management, reshaping industrial efficiency worldwide.Samuel Colt 1814–1862Technology & InventionIndustrialist who popularized the revolver and pioneered interchangeable parts in manufacturing.Ray Kurzweil b. 1948Technology & InventionBuilt the first machine that read print aloud to the blind, then spent decades predicting when machines would surpass us.Edwin Land 1909–1991Technology & InventionScientist and co-founder of Polaroid who invented instant photography.Sundar Pichai b. 1972Technology & InventionCEO of Alphabet and Google who oversees the world's dominant search engine and AI research.Vint Cerf b. 1943Technology & InventionCo-designer of the TCP/IP protocols that form the foundation of the internet.Philo Farnsworth 1906–1971Technology & InventionDemonstrated the first fully electronic television system using his image dissector tube.John A. Roebling 1806–1869Engineering & ArchitectureDeveloped wire-rope suspension bridge design and planned the Brooklyn Bridge.Peter Thiel b. 1967Technology & InventionPayPal co-founder and first outside investor in Facebook whose contrarian views shaped Silicon Valley culture.Frederick Terman 1900–1982Technology & InventionStanford dean and provost who built the first university industrial parkWHWilliam Hewlett 1913–2001Technology & InventionDesigned HP's first product and the pocket calculator that ended the slide rule.Dennis Ritchie 1941–2011Technology & InventionCreated the C programming language and co-developed Unix at Bell Labs.Tim Cook b. 1960Technology & InventionCEO of Apple who steered the company to become the world's most valuable after Steve Jobs's death.Jack Kilby 1923–2005Technology & InventionCo-inventor of the integrated circuit, a foundational innovation that made modern electronics possible.H. H. Richardson 1838–1886Engineering & ArchitectureThe first American architect with a style of his own, copied across the country and inherited by Sullivan and Wright.George Washington Goethals 1858–1928Engineering & ArchitectureChief engineer of the Panama CanalSheryl Sandberg b. 1969Technology & InventionFormer COO of Meta who wrote Lean In and became a prominent voice on women in leadership.Theodore von Karman 1881–1963Engineering & ArchitectureAerodynamics, the Karman vortex street, and the founding of JPLRobert Venturi 1925–2018Engineering & ArchitectureArchitect and author of Complexity and Contradiction in ArchitectureMarc Andreessen b. 1971Technology & InventionCo-author of the first web browser and co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, a leading venture capital firm.Julia Morgan 1872–1957Engineering & ArchitectureFirst woman licensed as an architect in California and designer of Hearst Castle.Charles Goodyear 1800–1860Technology & InventionSelf-taught chemist who discovered the vulcanization process that made rubber commercially viable.Douglas Engelbart 1925–2013Technology & InventionEngineer who invented the computer mouse and demonstrated interactive computing in 1968.Washington Roebling 1837–1926Engineering & ArchitectureEngineer who oversaw the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge after his father's death.Walter Brattain 1902–1987Technology & InventionThe experimentalist whose hands built the first working transistor, at Bell Labs in December 1947.J. C. R. Licklider 1915–1990Technology & InventionThe 1960 paper that described interactive computing before it existed, and the ARPA money that produced the ARPANETGarrett Morgan 1877–1963Technology & InventionInventor who created the traffic signal and gas mask, saving countless lives.Reed Hastings b. 1960Technology & InventionCo-founder of Netflix who disrupted the entertainment industry by pioneering streaming video.John Ericsson 1803–1889Engineering & ArchitectureSwedish-American engineer who designed the ironclad USS Monitor, revolutionizing naval warfare.Donald Knuth b. 1938Technology & InventionWrote The Art of Computer Programming and created the TeX typesetting system.John McCarthy 1927–2011Technology & InventionCoined the term artificial intelligence and created the Lisp programming language.Willis Carrier 1876–1950Technology & InventionEngineer who invented modern air conditioning, transforming industry, architecture, and daily life.Margaret Hamilton b. 1936Technology & InventionDirected development of the Apollo onboard flight software and popularized the term software engineering.Susan Wojcicki 1968–2024Technology & InventionFormer CEO of YouTube who helped build Google and oversaw the video platform's explosive growth.Frank Malina 1912–1981Engineering & ArchitectureLed the Caltech student rocket group that became JPL, then left America under investigation and spent a second life as an artist in Paris.Granville Woods 1856–1910Technology & InventionPatented induction telegraph and electrical systems that improved railway communication and safety.Aaron Swartz 1986–2013Technology & InventionInternet activist and Reddit co-founder whose work on open access and web standards left a lasting legacy.Jack Dorsey b. 1976Technology & InventionCo-founder of Twitter and Square who shaped social media and mobile payments.Edwin Howard Armstrong 1890–1954Technology & InventionInvented the regenerative and superheterodyne circuits and frequency modulation radio.Ken Thompson b. 1943Technology & InventionCo-created Unix at Bell Labs and later co-designed the Go programming language.Gustavus Franklin Swift 1839–1903Engineering & ArchitectureMeatpacking pioneer who developed the refrigerated rail car, transforming the food industry.Lee de Forest 1873–1961Technology & InventionInvented the Audion triode tube that enabled electronic signal amplification and early radio broadcasting.Bob Kahn b. 1938Technology & InventionCo-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols alongside Vint Cerf, enabling modern digital communication.Meg Whitman b. 1956Technology & InventionFormer CEO of eBay and HP who helped build e-commerce and enterprise technology giants.John Mauchly 1907–1980Technology & InventionCo-inventor of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer.Alan Kay b. 1940Technology & InventionLed Smalltalk development at Xerox PARC and advanced graphical interfaces and personal computing concepts.Charles Proteus Steinmetz 1865–1923Engineering & ArchitectureElectrical engineer whose work on alternating current systems powered the electrification of America.Elias Howe 1819–1867Technology & InventionInventor who developed the first practical lockstitch sewing machine, revolutionizing the garment industry.Kelly Johnson 1910–1990Engineering & ArchitectureLed Lockheed's Skunk Works and designed the U-2 and SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft.Travis Kalanick b. 1976Technology & InventionCo-founder of Uber who popularized the gig economy and transformed urban transportation worldwide.Lisa Su b. 1969Technology & InventionCEO of AMD who transformed the semiconductor company into a major competitor to Intel and NVIDIA.Dean Kamen b. 1951Technology & InventionInventor of the Segway, insulin pump, and water purification systems for the developing world.Brian Chesky b. 1981Technology & InventionCo-founder of Airbnb who created the global home-sharing marketplace that disrupted the hotel industry.Lewis Howard Latimer 1848–1928Technology & InventionPatented a durable carbon filament process and drafted key electrical patents for Bell and Edison.Robert Metcalfe b. 1946Technology & InventionCo-invented Ethernet at Xerox PARC and founded 3Com to commercialize local area networking.Joseph Strauss 1870–1938Engineering & ArchitectureChief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, one of the most photographed structures in the world.Marissa Mayer b. 1975Technology & InventionFormer Yahoo CEO and early Google engineer who was one of Silicon Valley's most prominent female executives.William Le Baron Jenney 1832–1907Engineering & ArchitectureArchitect and engineer who designed the first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building in Chicago.CCChester Carlson 1906–1968Technology & InventionPhysicist who invented xerography, the technology behind the modern photocopier.J. Presper Eckert 1919–1995Technology & InventionCo-inventor of ENIAC and pioneer of electronic computing alongside John Mauchly.Othmar Ammann 1879–1965Engineering & ArchitectureSwiss-American structural engineer who designed the George Washington Bridge and other major spans.Herman Hollerith 1860–1929Technology & InventionInvented punched-card tabulating machines used in the 1890 census and founded a corporate predecessor of IBM.Bill Joy b. 1954Technology & InventionPrincipal author of Berkeley Unix and co-founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems.Reid Hoffman b. 1967Technology & InventionCo-founder of LinkedIn and influential venture capitalist who helped build Silicon Valley's startup ecosystem.John Backus 1924–2007Technology & InventionLed the IBM team that created FORTRAN and co-developed Backus-Naur notation.Evan Spiegel b. 1990Technology & InventionCo-founder of Snapchat who pioneered ephemeral messaging and augmented reality social media.Barbara Liskov b. 1939Technology & InventionDeveloped data abstraction in the CLU language and formulated the Liskov substitution principle.Elmer Sperry 1860–1930Engineering & ArchitectureInventor and engineer who developed gyroscopic stabilizers for ships and aircraft.Howard Aiken 1900–1973Engineering & ArchitecturePhysicist and engineer who designed the Harvard Mark I, an early electromechanical computer.John Atanasoff 1903–1995Technology & InventionPhysicist who built the first electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer.FRFazlur Rahman Khan 1929–1982Engineering & ArchitectureDeveloped tubular structural systems that made the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center possible.Alexis Ohanian b. 1983Technology & InventionCo-founder of Reddit and venture capitalist who has championed open internet and paternity leave.Federico Faggin b. 1941Technology & InventionLed design of the Intel 4004 microprocessor and later co-founded Zilog.Radia Perlman b. 1951Technology & InventionDesigned the spanning tree protocol that made large bridged Ethernet networks practical.Frances Allen 1932–2020Technology & InventionPioneered compiler optimization at IBM and was the first woman to receive the Turing Award.Safra Catz b. 1961Technology & InventionCEO of Oracle who has steered one of the world's largest enterprise software companies.Drew Houston b. 1983Technology & InventionCo-founder of Dropbox who made cloud file storage simple and ubiquitous for millions.Ralph Modjeski 1861–1940Engineering & ArchitecturePolish-American bridge engineer who designed major spans including the Bay Bridge and Benjamin Franklin Bridge.CBClifford Berry 1918–1963Technology & InventionCo-inventor of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, the first electronic digital computing device.