List of electrical engineers
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This is a list of electrical engineers (by no means exhaustive), people who have made notable contributions to electrical engineering or computer engineering.
| class="wikitable sortable" | |
| Name | Contribution(s) |
|---|---|
| A
| | |
| Norman Abramson | ALOHAnet network communication |
| Robert Campbell Aitken | Testing and diagnosis of integrated circuits |
| Luigi Amerio | |
| Edwin Armstrong | Radio, Regenerative circuit, superheterodyne receiver, frequency modulation (FM) |
| Maria Artini | First female university graduate in electrical engineering in Italy (1918) |
| Rodney Adkins | First African American to serve as a senior vice president at IBM, worked on IBM ThinkPad. |
| Hertha Marks Ayrton | Electric arc lighting, Hughes Medal of the Royal Society |
| William Edward Ayrton
|Measuring instruments, electric railways, searchlight | |
| B
| | |
| John Bardeen | Two Nobel Prizes: transistor, superconductivity |
| Emile Baudot | Telegraphy communications |
| Andy Bechtolsheim
|Co-founder of Sun Microsystems | |
| Arnold Orville Beckman
|pH meter, Beckman Instruments, Silicon Valley pioneer | |
| Alexander Graham Bell | |
| Alfred Rosling Bennett
|Pioneer of electric lighting and telephones | |
| Harold Stephen Black | Negative feedback amplifier |
| Ottó Bláthy | Pioneering electrical engineer |
| André Blondel
|Oscillography, electrical machine theory | |
| Alan Blumlein
|Inventions in telecommunications, sound recording, stereo, television, radar | |
| Hendrik Wade Bode | Control theory, Bode plot |
| Amar Bose | Founder of Bose Corporation |
| Mikhail Botvinnik | Computer chess, expert system AI |
| Paul Boucherot | Reactive power |
| Karlheinz Brandenburg | Audio compression scheme MP3 |
| Charles Tilston Bright | |
| Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown | Co-founder of Brown, Boveri & Cie |
| William C. Brown | Crossed-field amplifier, microwave power transmission |
| Walter Bruch | Television pioneer, inventor of the PAL colour television system |
| Charles Brush | Efficient dynamo, electric lighting, a founder of General Electric, wind power |
| James Buie | Inventor of TTL Logic |
| Charles Frederick Burgess | Battery technology development, pioneer of electrochemical engineering |
| C
| | |
| Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton | Theory of television |
| Marvin Camras | Magnetic recording |
| John Renshaw Carson | Single-sideband modulation |
| Morris Chang | Founder of TSMC |
| James Kilton Clapp | Clapp oscillator, General Radio Corporation |
| Edith Clarke | First American female professor of EE, author of Circuit Analysis of A-C Power Systems |
| Lynn Conway | Very large scale integrated circuit design, Mead and Conway revolution |
| William Coolidge
|X-ray technology | |
| Martin Cooper | Father of the wireless cellphone |
| William Corin | |
| Seymour Cray | Supercomputer architect |
| Rookes Evelyn Bell Crompton | Electric lighting, FRS, Crompton & Company, Major in the U.K. Army |
| D
| | |
| Sidney Darlington | Darlington transistor |
| Lee de Forest | Audion vacuum tube |
| Jack Dennis | Time sharing, Multics |
| Robert Dennard | Dynamic random-access memory |
| Marcel Deprez | HVDC power transmission pioneer |
| Vinod Dham | Contributions to Intel's Pentium processor |
| Bern Dibner
|Founder Burndy Co., electrical connectors, historian of the Transatlantic telegraph cable | |
| Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky | Inventor of three-phase motor |
| Ray Dolby | Dolby sound |
| William Duddell | Oscillography, the singing arc lamp |
| Allen DuMont | Television manufacturing pioneer |
| E
| | |
| John Presper Eckert | Computer pioneer |
| Thomas Edison | Prolific inventor: phonograph, first practical light bulb, telegraph improvements |
| Cyril Frank Elwell | Continuous Wave radio transmission, AM radio, founder of Federal Telegraph Company |
| Douglas Engelbart | Computer mouse, hypertext |
| Gertrude Lilian Entwisle
|First woman student member of Institution of Electrical Engineers first female engineer at British Westinghouse. | |
| Justus Entz | Electric transmission, electric vehicles, worked with Edison |
| Agner Krarup Erlang
|Communications and Queueing | |
| Lloyd Espenschied | Developments in radio communications and coaxial cable technology. |
| F
| | |
| Federico Faggin | Intel microprocessor, Zilog z80 |
| Michael Faraday | Discovered electromagnetic induction and Faraday shield |
| Moses Farmer | Electric railway |
| Philo Farnsworth | American television pioneer |
| Galileo Ferraris | Rotating magnetic field |
| Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti | Ferranti Corporation |
| Reginald Fessenden | 'Father' of radio broadcasting |
| Donald Fink | Radio navigation LORAN, television standards, author and editor |
| Hal Finney | Helped Satoshi Nakamoto create Bitcoinhttps://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/finneynakamotoemails.pdf {{Bare URL PDF|date=June 2025}} |
| Gerhard Fischer | Handheld metal detector |
| John Ambrose Fleming | Inventor of the thermionic valve (vacuum tube) |
| Tommy Flowers | Designer of the first programmable digital electronic computer |
| Jay Forrester | American computer pioneer |
| Charles Legeyt Fortescue | Symmetrical components for three-phase power system analysis |
| Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier | Physicist; Fourier transform / Fourier series |
| Limor Fried
|Founder of Adafruit Industries, open source hardware advocate | |
| Leonard Fuller
|Radio pioneer, carrier current on power systems | |
| G
| | |
| Dennis Gabor | Hungarian inventor of holography, Nobel Prize in Physics |
| Claire Gmachl | Advanced development of quantum cascade lasers |
| Bernhard Goldenberg | Responsible for the rapid expansion of electrification in the Rhineland and Ruhr area |
| James Edward Henry Gordon (J.E.H. Gordon) | Electric lighting and power |
| Zénobe Gramme | Dynamo |
| Elisha Gray | Telephone pioneer |
| Richard Grimsdale | Transistorized computers |
| H
| | |
| Susan Hackwood | Co-inventor of electro-wetting |
| Erna Hamburger
|Swiss electrical engineer working in radio-wave research. First female STEM professor in Switzerland. | |
| Edward E. Hammer | Spiral compact fluorescent lamp |
| Naomi Halas | Nanophotonics |
| Roger F. Harrington | Computational electromagnetics, method of moments (MoM) |
| Ralph Hartley | Electronics |
| Caroline Haslett | Founder of The Woman Engineer |
| Oliver Heaviside | Re-formulated Maxwell's equations (vector calculus) |
| Oskar Heil | Field-effect transistor, loudspeaker |
| Heinrich Rudolf Hertz | Hertzian waves |
| Peter Cooper Hewitt | Mercury vapor lamp, mercury arc rectifier |
| William Hewlett | Hewlett-Packard |
| Hugo Hirst
|Co-founder of General Electric Company | |
| Godfrey Hounsfield | Inventor of the world's first computed tomography (CT) scanner, shared 1979 Nobel Prize |
| Edwin J. Houston | Arc lighting, co-founder of what would become General Electric, president of AIEE |
| John Hopkinson | Inventor of three-phase electrical system |
| Grace Hopper | Computer programmer (first compiler) |
| Jensen Huang | Founder of Nvidia |
| Lawrence A. Hyland | Radar pioneer, leader of Hughes Aircraft |
| Paul Horowitz | SETI, co-author of The Art of Electronics |
| Mina Hsiang
|Third Administrator of the United States Digital Service, Executive Office of the President of the United States | |
| I
| | |
| Kees Schouhamer Immink | Pioneer optical recording, CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc |
| Samuel Insull | Central station generation, electrical utilities, Edison pioneer |
| J
| | |
| Irwin M. Jacobs | Co-founder of Qualcomm |
| Fleeming Jenkin | Submarine telegraph cables |
| Kristina Johnson | Polarization-control techniques |
| Bill Joy | |
| K
| | |
| Rudolf Kálmán | Inventor of the Kalman filter |
| Kálmán Kandó | Pioneer of high voltage railway electrification systems |
| Nathaniel S. Keith | Founding secretary of AIEE; electric power |
| Arthur E. Kennelly | Complex numbers in AC circuit theory |
| Charles Kettering | Automobile electrical innovations, Delco founder |
| Jack Kilby | Nobel Prize: integrated circuit |
| Max Knoll | Electron microscope |
| Otto A. Knopp
|Innovator of the standard testing transformer and the compensation winding. | |
| John D. Kraus | Radio telescope, antennas |
| Herbert Kroemer | Heterostructures and semiconductor physics |
| L
| | |
| Eric Laithwaite | Linear induction motor |
| Uno Lamm | Swedish, HVDC and mercury-arc valves |
| Ayyalasomayajula Lalitha
|India’s first female electrical engineer | |
| Benjamin G. Lamme
|Niagara Falls power engineering | |
| Bertha Lamme
|Westinghouse's first female engineer, first American woman to graduate in a main discipline of engineering other than civil engineering | |
| Georges Leclanché | Primary battery |
| Morris E. Leeds | Leeds & Northrup measurement and control devices |
| Alexander Lodygin | Russian, incandescent lighting, motors |
| M
| | |
| Östen Mäkitalo | 'Father' of cellular phone |
| Guglielmo Marconi | Practical radio |
| Orlando R. Marsh | Electrical sound recording |
| Erwin Otto Marx | Marx generator high voltage DC |
| Mabel Lucy Matthews
|British electrical and production engineer, instigator of idea for the Electrical Association for Women | |
| John Mauchly | ENIAC designer |
| Florence Violet McKenzie | Australia's first female EE, educator, OBE |
| Charles Hesterman Merz | NESCO electric power grid, England |
| William Henry Merrill | Founder of Underwriters Laboratories |
| Robert Metcalfe | Ethernet, 3Com |
| Antonio Meucci
|Telephone pioneer | |
| John L. Moll | Solid-state physics, the Ebers-Moll transistor model |
| Robert Moog | Electronic music pioneer, invented Moog synthesizer |
| Daniel McFarlan Moore | Electrical discharge lighting |
| N
| | |
| Shuji Nakamura | Blue gallium-nitride light-emitting diode |
| Thyagarajan Nandagopal | Wireless network optimization, RFID systems, and network architectures |
| Edward Lawry Norton | Norton's theorem |
| Robert Noyce | Co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel |
| Nikhilesh Chandrashekar | Chandashekar's phenomenon |
| O
| | |
| Bernard M. (Barney) Oliver
| Hewlett-Packard, founder HP Labs | |
| Kenneth Olsen | Magnetic-core memory; Digital Equipment Corporation |
| Stanford R. Ovshinsky | Semiconductors |
| P
| | |
| David Packard | Hewlett-Packard |
| Konstantinos Papathanassiou | Polarimetric interferometry for synthetic aperture radar |
| Robert H. Park | Park's transformation |
| Margaret Partridge
|Electrical engineer, contractor and founder member of the Women's Engineering Society (WES) and the Electrical Association for Women (EAW). Helped change the International Labour Organisation convention on night work for women in 1934 | |
| R. Fabian Pease
|Professor at Stanford University | |
| Donald Pederson | 'Father' of SPICE |
| Serge Pelissou | Characterize extruded cables and components in their life cycles |
| Dinh Thuy Phan Huy | Wireless 5G research in Europe |
| G. W. Pierce | Oscillator, crystal control |
| William Henry Preece | Telegraphy, nemesis of Heaviside |
| Franklin Leonard Pope | Telegraphy, electric lighting, Edison influence |
| Valdemar Poulsen | Magnetic recording |
| Michael I. Pupin | Long-distance telephone communication; "Pupin coil" |
| R
| | |
| Simon Ramo | Physicist, microwaves, missiles, founder of TRW and Bunker Ramo Corporation |
| Elliot Rappaport | Grounding in industrial and commercial power systems |
| Richard H. Ranger | Wireless fax, radar, magnetic tape recording |
| Alec Reeves
| Inventor of pulse code modulation | |
| Johann Philipp Reis | Inventor of the Reis telephone |
| Stephen Renals | Speech recognition technology |
| Hyman G. Rickover | 'Father' of the nuclear Navy |
| Mabel MacFerran Rockwell | Only woman to work on the electrical systems of Hoover Dam' pioneer in aeronautical electronics |
| Edward S. Rogers, Sr. | Inventor of the first successful AC radio tube |
| Francis Ronalds | Built first working electric telegraph |
| Arye Rosen | Semiconductor devices and circuits for use in microwave systems and for microwave applications to medicine |
| Harold Rosen | Syncom communication satellite |
| H. J. Round | Radio pioneer and assistant to Guglielmo Marconi |
| Reinhold Rudenberg | Electron microscope |
| S
| | |
| Henry Samueli | Co-founder of Broadcom |
| Philip Schniter | Signal processing in communications |
| Carl Louis Schwendler | Electric lighting and telegraph |
| Thomas Johann Seebeck | Thermoelectric effect |
| Oliver B. Shallenberger | AC electricity meters |
| Claude Shannon | 'Father' of communication theory |
| Ernst Werner von Siemens | Inventor, industrialist, Siemens & Halske, Siemens (unit) |
| Carl Wilhelm Siemens | Telegraphy, motors and generators, electric pyrometer |
| Alexander Siemens | Electric lighting, power, Society of Telegraph Engineers (predecessor to IEE) |
| Phillip Hagar Smith | Smith chart |
| Haruhisa Soda | Vertical-cavity surface-emitting and distributed-feedback lasers |
| Mehmet Soyuer | Design of high-frequency integrated circuits |
| Percy Spencer | Microwave oven |
| Frank J. Sprague | 'Father' of electric traction |
| Chauncey Starr | Founder of Electric Power Research Institute |
| J. J. Stiffler | Key contributions in communications (especially coding theory) and fault-tolerant computing |
| Charles Proteus Steinmetz | Alternating current theories, first use of j operator |
| Senichi Suzuki | High-density integrated silica-based planar lightwave circuits |
| T
| | |
| Sarkes Tarzian | Radio inventor, broadcasting, radio manufacturer |
| Albert H. Taylor
|First demonstration of radar | |
| Bernard D. H. Tellegen
|Inventor of the pentode, formulated Tellegen's theorem | |
| Nikola Tesla | Revolving magnetic field induction motor, Tesla coil, polyphase transmission systems, transformer |
| Silvanus P. Thompson | Educator, author, electrical machinery, X-ray technology, radio |
| Elihu Thomson | Entrepreneur, co-founder of what would become General Electric |
| William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) | Telegraphic cables |
| René Thury | High-voltage direct current power transmission, electric traction |
| Kálmán Tihanyi | Television pioneer |
| Philip Torchio | Edison Electric Company |
| V
| | |
| Charles Joseph Van Depoele | Electric railway pioneer |
| C. F. Varley | Submarine cable, Varley bridge |
| Milan Vidmar | Power transformers and high-voltage transmission |
| Mahesh Viswanathan
|Cloud computing and vehicular speech communications | |
| Andrew Viterbi
|Co-founder of Qualcomm and invented the Viterbi algorithm | |
| Alessandro Volta
|Inventor of electrical battery and pioneer of electrical science | |
| W
| | |
| Trevor Wadley | Innovations in radio and microwave technology |
| Pengjun Wan | Scheduling and resource allocation in wireless networks |
| Harry Ward Leonard | Inventor of the Ward Leonard control system |
| Robert Watson-Watt | First practical radar |
| George Westinghouse | AC power industrialist |
| Harold Alden Wheeler | Automatic volume control, radar |
| Uncas A. Whitaker | Founder of AMP Inc. and philanthropist |
| Bob Widlar | Integrated circuits |
| Niklaus Wirth | Computer programming languages |
| Feng Wu | Visual data compression and communication |
| Steve Wozniak | Personal computers, Apple Computer |
| Y
| | |
| Pavel Yablochkov | Electric arc lighting |
| Hidetsugu Yagi | |
| Kane S. Yee | Finite-difference time-domain method |
| Z
| | |
| Otto Julius Zobel | Filters |
| Konrad Zuse
|Computers |
See also
- List of engineers - for lists of engineers from other disciplines
- List of Russian electrical engineers