James Gosling (Canadian computer scientist) was born on May 19, 1955

James Arthur Gosling is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the father of the Java programming language. Gosling is generally credited with having invented the Java programming language in 1994. He created the original design of Java and implemented the language’s original compiler and virtual machine. Gosling traces the origins of the approach to his early 19s graduate-student days, when he created a pseudo-code (p-code) virtual machine for the lab’s DEC VAX computer, so that his professor could run programs written in UCSD Pascal. Pascal compiled into p-code to foster precisely this kind of portability. In the work leading to Java at Sun, he saw that architecture-neutral execution for widely distributed programs could be achieved by implementing a similar philosophy: always program for the same virtual machine.

Alan Kay (American computer scientist) was born on May 17, 1940

Alan Curtis Kay is an American computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design, and for coining the phrase, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” He is the president of the Viewpoints Research Institute, and an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also on the advisory board of TTI/Vanguard. Until mid 2005, he was a Senior Fellow at HP Labs, a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University, and an Adjunct Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Kay has lectured extensively on the idea that the computer revolution is very new, and all of the good ideas have not been universally implemented. Lectures at OOPSLA 1997 conference and his ACM Turing award talk, entitled “The Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet” were informed by his experiences with Sketchpad, Simula, Smalltalk, and the bloated code of commercial software. On August 31, 2006, Kay’s proposal to the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) was granted, thus funding Viewpoints Research Institute for several years. The proposal title was: Steps Toward the Reinvention of Programming: A compact and Practical Model of Personal Computing as a Self-exploratorium. A sense of what Kay is trying to do comes from this quote, from the abstract of a seminar on this given at Intel Research Labs, Berkeley: “The conglomeration of commercial and most open source software consumes in the neighborhood of several hundreds of millions of lines of code these days. We wonder: how small could be an understandable practical “Model T” design that covers this functionality? 1M lines of code? 200K LOC? 100K LOC? 20K LOC?”

Ivan Sutherland (American computer scientist and Internet pioneer) was born on May 16, 1938

Ivan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He received the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1988 for the invention of Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal computers. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as the National Academy of Sciences among many other major awards. In 2012 he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology for “pioneering achievements in the development of computer graphics and interactive interfaces”. Sutherland was a Fellow and Vice President at Sun Microsystems. Sutherland was a visiting scholar in the Computer Science Division at University of California, Berkeley (Fall 2005–Spring 2008). On May 28, 2006, Ivan Sutherland married Marly Roncken. Sutherland and Marly Roncken are leading the research in Asynchronous Systems at Portland State University. He has two children, Juliet and Dean, and four grandchildren, Belle, Robert, William and Rose. Ivan’s elder brother, Bert Sutherland, is also a prominent computer science researcher.

Richard Feynman (American physicist) was born on May 11, 1918

Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. He developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb and was a member of the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In addition to his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing, and introducing the concept of nanotechnology. He held the Richard Chace Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology.

Hans Georg Bock (German university professor for mathematics and scientific computing) was born on May 9, 1948

Hans Georg Bock is a German university professor for mathematics and scientific computing. He is managing director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing of the University of Heidelberg since 2005, and has been vice managing director from 1993 to 2004. Hans Georg Bock is a member of the European Mathematical Society’s committee for developing countries (CDC-EMS) and responsible member for the region of Asia therein. In appreciation of his merits with respect to Vietnamese-German relations and his role in the establishment of high performance scientific computing in Vietnam, he was awarded the honorary degree of the Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology in 2000. In 2003, he was awarded the Medal of Merit of the Vietnamese Ministry for Education and Training.

Steven Weinberg (American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics) was born on May 3, 1933

Steven Weinberg is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles. Besides his scientific research, Steven Weinberg has been a prominent public spokesman for science, testifying before Congress in support of the Superconducting Super Collider, writing articles for the New York Review of Books, and giving various lectures on the larger meaning of science. His books on science written for the public combine the typical scientific popularization with what is traditionally considered history and philosophy of science and atheism. Weinberg was a major participant in what is known as the Science Wars, standing with Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt, Alan Sokal, Lewis Wolpert, and Richard Dawkins, on the side arguing for the hard realism of science and scientific knowledge and against the constructionism proposed by such social scientists as Stanley Aronowitz, Barry Barnes, David Bloor, David Edge, Harry Collins, Steve Fuller, and Bruno Latour.

Michael Coyle (American composer) was born on May 2, 1957

Michael Patrick Coyle is an American composer. Michael Coyle is a composer/arranger in Minneapolis, and also the senior producer for an independent, multi-media production company based in Manhattan. He is the former composer-in-residence for the Manhattan Performance Group and the Cottage Theater in New York, and was the editor of Stagebill Magazine at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. Michael’s works have been featured on television, film, and stage, and in art installations in New York, Boston, and Minneapolis, and Madison, WI. He works in a wide variety of styles, but primarily enjoys writing for instrumental chamber ensembles and orchestra. Most evident in Michael’s music is a rich use of both traditional and extended harmony balanced with sections of harmonic ambiguity and atonality. He believes that the combination of tonality and atonality is critical to the appreciation of both. By his own admission, he is obsessed with novel variation in both tone color and texture. He has been recognized as an adept and imaginative orchestrator. He works with both acoustic and electronic instruments in order to have access to as wide a palette of raw sound as possible. One of Michael’s recent works, Tänzchen für vier, was a winner of the annual Zeitgeist/American Composers Forum competition and was premiered by Zeitgeist in March of 2011. In addition to music, Michael has an avid interest in science and material experimentation and in the mid-1980s accepted a position as Production Manager for McHugh-Rollins Associates, a properties and special effects design firm in New York City. While in that position he oversaw the special effects production of such large Broadway shows as The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables and implemented the effects for Ingmar Bergman’s production of Hamlet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, as well as many other stage productions and films.