John Atanasoff (1903-1995) was a pioneer in the field of computer science. In the late 1930s, while teaching at Iowa State University, he designed and built an electronic computing machine with one of his graduate students, Clifford Berry. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) was probably the first machine to use vacuum tubes to perform its calculations.

John Vincent Atanasoff was born on October 4, 1903, in Hamilton, New York. He was the son of Ivan (John) Atanasoff, a Bulgarian immigrant who worked as a mining engineer, and an American mother, who taught school. Atanasoff became interested in calculating devices at an early age--he began studying his father's slide rule when he was only nine, and read technical books on mathematics, physics, and chemistry. He decided to be a theoretical physicist while in high school, and went on to the University of Florida, obtaining a degree in electrical engineering. He then received...