Konrad Zuse

1910 - 1995

Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) was a German engineer, inventor, and computer pioneer who built the world's first programmable computer, making him one of the most significant figures in the history of computing. Working largely in isolation in Nazi Germany, Zuse completed the Z3 in 1941, the first fully automatic, programmable computer using binary arithmetic and floating-point numbers. What makes his achievement remarkable is that he developed his concepts independently, without knowledge of similar work in other countries. Zuse was also the first to devise a high-level programming language, Plankalkül, between 1942-1945, which conceptually preceded later programming developments by nearly a decade. Despite wartime restrictions and the destruction of much of his work during Allied bombing, Zuse persisted in his innovations. After the war, he founded one of the first computer companies, Zuse KG. His theoretical contributions included early concepts of computational complexity and explorations of cellular automata. Though his work remained relatively unknown outside Germany for decades, Zuse is now recognized as a visionary whose achievements parallel those of computing pioneers like Alan Turing and John von Neumann.