Charles Babbage Charles Babbage Charles Babbage (; 26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer. Considered by some to be a "father of the computer", Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex electronic designs, though all the essential ideas of modern computers are to be found in Babbage's analytical engine. His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century. Parts of Babbage's incomplete
Curtis Cooper (mathematician) Curtis Cooper (mathematician) Curtis Niles Cooper is an American mathematician. He currently is a professor at the University of Central Missouri, in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Using software from the GIMPS project, Cooper and Steven Boone found the 43rd known Mersenne prime on their 700 PC cluster on December 15, 2005. The prime, 2 − 1, is 9,152,052 digits long and is the ninth Mersenne prime for GIMPS. Cooper and Boone became the first GIMPS contributors to find two primes when they also found the 44th known Mersenne prime, 2 − 1 (or M), which has 9,808,358