Computer Science Superheroes

Elizabeth Feinler

Born: March 2, 1931

She graduated from West Liberty University with a Bachelor’s degree in chemistry. She then went to graduate school at Purdue University, where she worked on a project to index the world’s chemical compounds.

Her biggest accomplishment was helping start the internet. She mainly worked on the ARPANET, one of the early forerunners to the internet. It first implemented some of the foundational technologies that are used in modern internet. She worked with the ARPANET’s Network Information Center to provide support for the network’s users. ARPANET was contracted by the Department of Defense and Feinler’s group of workers were the heads of naming domains, like .com, .edu, .gov and more.

She was originally a chemistry student in college, but the graduate project she did got her involved in information sciences, which led her to exit the field of chemistry and start doing research work.

Larry Page

Born: March 26, 1973

He got his bachelor’s at Michigan State University, and progressed to graduate study at Stanford, where he met co-founder of google, Sergey Brin. While in school he began work on google, and after completing his masters, stopped his doctorate to focus on the business.

He created google, the world's most popular search engine. It was largely successful because of their innovations on other search engines. They optimized search results to be more relevant and made it easier to support advertising, making their search engine profitable.

He, like Feinler, got his major start in the tech business in Menlo Park, California at Stanford. He was also born in March.

Mark Dean

Born: March 2, 1957

Dean had a passion for construction from a young age. Dean's father, a manager at the Tennessee Valley Authority, assisted him as a young boy in building a tractor from scratch. Dean was a multifaceted success who stood out as a skilled athlete, a brilliant student, and a straight-A graduate from Jefferson City High School. At the University of Tennessee, where he studied engineering, he graduated first in his class in 1979.

The accessibility and power of the personal computer were changed as a result of Dean's research at IBM. His efforts contributed to the creation of the color personal computer monitor, and in 1999 Dean oversaw a group of engineers at IBM's Austin, Texas, lab to produce the first gigahertz chip, a ground-breaking invention that can perform a billion calculations per second.