People from United Kingdom

Michael Faraday

Self-taught scientist who discovered electromagnetic induction

1791 – 1867

James Watt

Scottish engineer whose improved steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution

1736 – 1819

Joe Armstrong

British computer scientist who co-created the Erlang programming language

1950 – 2019

Michael Acton Smith

British entrepreneur behind Moshi Monsters and the Calm meditation app

James H. Wilkinson

English mathematician who laid the foundations of reliable numerical computing

1919 – 1986

Alan Turing

Mathematician who founded computer science and helped break the Enigma code

1912 – 1954

Leslie Valiant

Theorist who created a mathematical foundation for machine learning

Born 1949

Karen Spärck Jones

British computer scientist who invented inverse document frequency, used in search engines

1935 – 2007

Tony Hoare

British computer scientist who invented Quicksort and Hoare logic

1934 – 2026

Tim Berners-Lee

Inventor of the World Wide Web

Born 1955

Stuart Russell

Berkeley professor who co-wrote the leading AI textbook and campaigns for safe AI

Steve Furber

Engineer who co-designed the ARM processor and the BBC Micro

Born 1953

Sophie Wilson

Computer scientist who designed the ARM instruction set and BBC BASIC

Robin Milner

British computer scientist who created the ML language and theories of concurrency

1934 – 2010

Nik Storonsky

Russian-born British co-founder and CEO of Revolut

Born 1984

Mo Ibrahim

Sudanese-British founder of Celtel and the Ibrahim Prize for African leadership

Born 1946

Martin Fowler

British software author known for Refactoring and agile methods

Born 1963

Emad Mostaque

Founder of Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion

Charles K. Kao

“Godfather of broadband” who showed glass fibres could carry light over long distances

1933 – 2018

Charles Babbage

Victorian mathematician who designed the first programmable mechanical computer

1791 – 1871

Jony Ive

British designer of the iMac, iPod and iPhone and founder of LoveFrom

Born 1967

John Logie Baird

Scottish inventor who gave the first public demonstration of television

1888 – 1946

Tommy Flowers

Post Office engineer who built Colossus, the first programmable electronic computer

1905 – 1998

Mike Lynch

Founder of Autonomy, once called Britain’s Bill Gates

1965 – 2024