Most research in computer science has focused on von Neumann computers or Turing machines (computation models that perform one small, deterministic step at a time). These models resemble, at a basic level, most real computers in use today. Computer scientists also study other models of computation, including parallel machines and theoretical models such as probabilistic, oracle, and quantum computers.
"Computer science is not as old as physics; it lags by a couple of hundred years. However, this does not mean that there is significantly less on the computer scientist's plate than on the physicist's: younger it may be, but it has had a far more intense upbringing!"
Computer science has roots in electrical engineering, mathematics, and linguistics. In the last third of the 20th century computer science emerged as a distinct discipline and developed its own methods and terminology. The first computer science department in the United States was founded at Purdue University in 1962, while the first college entirely devoted to computer science was founded at Northeastern University in 1980. Prior to this, CS was taught as part of mathematics or engineering departments, for instance at the University of Cambridge in England and at the Gdansk University of Technology in Poland, respectively. Cambridge claims to have the world's oldest taught qualification in computing. Most universities today have specific departments devoted to computer science, while some conjoin it with engineering, with applied mathematics, or other disciplines.
Related fields
Computer science is closely related to a number of fields. These fields overlap considerably, though important differences exist
Computer engineering is the analysis, design, and construction of computer hardware.
Computer graphics is the field of visual computing, where one uses computers both to generate visual images synthetically and to integrate or alter visual and spatial information sampled from the real world.
Information science or Informatics is the study of data and information, including how to create, interpret, analyze, store, retrieve, transfer, and manage it. Information science started as the scientific foundation for communication and databases. It also concerns about the ways people generate, use and find information (see Cognitive science).
Information systems (IS) is the application of computing to support the operations of an organization: operating, installing, and maintaining the computers, software, and data.
Lexicography focus on the study of lexicographic reference works and include the study of electronic and Internet-based dictionaries.
Logic is a formal system of reasoning, and studies principles that lay at the basis of computing machines, whether it be the hardware (digital logic) or software (verification, AI etc.) levels.
Management information systems (MIS) is a subfield of information systems, that emphasizes financial and personnel management.
Mathematics shares many techniques and topics with computer science, but is more general. Theoretical computer science is the mathematics of computing.
The name "computer science" immediately gives the impression that the field is the study of computers, the everyday machines that run programs and perform computations. Nonetheless, the field (as noted above) is both wider and more abstract than this name would suggest. Alternate names such as "computation science" have been proposed, but the traditional name remains the most common.
In French, the discipline is named informatique, in German Informatik, and in Polish informatyka. However, informatics in English is not directly synonymous with computer science; it is actually more equivalent with information theory.
John Vincent Atanasoff, for building the first electronic digital computer: the ABC Computer. Differently than ENIAC, allegedly the first all-electronic computer designed to be Turing-complete, the ABC Computer was not programmable.
John Backus, for inventing FORTRAN (Formula Translation), the first practical high-level programming language and formulating the Backus-Naur form for describing formal language syntax.
Alonzo Church, for founding contributions to theoretical computer science, specifically for the development of the lambda calculus and the discovery of the undecidable problem within it.
Kurt Godel, for his 1930 proof that demonstrated that Peano axiomatized arithemetic could not be both logically consistent and complete in first-order predicate calculus. Church, Kleene, and Turing developed the foundations of computation theory based on corallaries to Godel's work in 1930.
Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, for pioneering work on the necessity for high-level programming languages, which she termed automatic programming, for writing the A-O compiler, and heavily influencing the COBOL language.
Kenneth Iverson, for inventing the APL and for his contribution to interactive computing.
Jacek Karpinski, for developing the first differential analyzer using transistors and developing one of the first machine learning algorithms for character and image recognition. Also the inventor of one of the first minicomputers, the K-202 .
Stephen Cole Kleene, for his pioneering work with Alonzo Church in Lambda Calculus that first laid down the foundations of computation theory.
Ramon Llull, for his multiple symbolic representations machines, his ars combinatoria, and his pioneering notions of symbolic representation and manipulation to produce knowledge. He was a HUGE influence on Leibniz.
Ada Lovelace, for beginning the study of scientific computation, specifically for her "Sketch of the Analytical Engine", an analysis of Babbage's work and for the namesake for the modern computer language, Ada.
Alan Turing, for founding contributions to computer science, for the formulation of the Turing machine computational model, and for the design of the Pilot ACE.
Maurice Wilkes, for building the first practical stored program computer to be completed and for being credited with the ideas of several high-level programming language constructs.
Konrad Zuse for building a binary computer, for which he allegedly devised a theoretical high level programming language, Plankalkül.
