Comment by discoutdynamite

V.M. Glushkov. Soviet scientist who basically delineated cybernetics and computer science as a distinct field. He was about 50 years ahead of his time, so a lot of his best ideas we didnt really start fulfilling until quite recently. His grasp of the fundamental limitations of computers, and how to do useful things within them, was remarkable. He wasnt properly enabled and appreciated by the Soviets, so they were never able to lead the world in computing, but they had some impressive achievements. If you want to learn more, I recomend "Pioneers of Soviet Computing" and Glushkov's own "Introduction to Cybernetics". Of especial interest is his classification of algorithms and automata, nice to compare to modern programming paradigms and developments in new kinds of neural networks.