Konrad Zuse

Konrad Zuse, creator, in 1941, of the first fully-automated, program-controlled, and freely-programmable computer for binary floating-point calculations, and later, of the basic programming system, Plankalkül, died in Hünfeld, Germany on December 18, 1995. He was 85.  His contributions were so striking, and made under such adversity, that Computer History Museum has made an exception to its usual practice and named him a Fellow posthumously.  His son, Horst Zuse, Professor of Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin, will be accepting the award on his father's behalf.  Additionally, a colloquium on Zuse's contributions to computer science is planned for October 1, 1999 at NASA Ames Research Center followed by a public celebration of the recent donation of a Zuse Z23 mainframe computer to Computer History Museum.  He is shown below in 1945.