# computerscience.co.uk > The history of computer science, the people who built it, and rankings of the > best places to study it. Every fact is sourced; every page shows the date it was > last reviewed. Every HTML page has a markdown twin: append `index.md` to any > URL path, or request any page with `Accept: text/markdown`. The whole site is also an Open Knowledge Format (OKF v0.1) bundle rooted at [/index.md](https://computerscience.co.uk/index.md), made of markdown documents with YAML frontmatter, cross-linked into a knowledge graph. ## Sections - [The history of computer science](https://computerscience.co.uk/history/index.md): eras, machines and breakthroughs, plus direct answers to common questions - [The people](https://computerscience.co.uk/people/index.md): sourced biographies of the field's key figures - [The universities](https://computerscience.co.uk/universities/index.md): global CS rankings aggregated from QS, THE, ARWU and CSRankings ## People - [Alan Turing: the Founder of Computer Science](https://computerscience.co.uk/people/alan-turing/index.md): Alan Turing defined the computer in 1936, helped break German ciphers in the Second World War, and set the terms for artificial intelligence. - [Charles Babbage: the Father of the Computer](https://computerscience.co.uk/people/charles-babbage/index.md): Charles Babbage designed the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine in the 1800s, laying out the shape of the general-purpose computer a century early. - [Ada Lovelace: the First Computer Programmer](https://computerscience.co.uk/people/ada-lovelace/index.md): Ada Lovelace wrote what is considered the first computer program in 1843 and saw that a machine could do more than arithmetic, long before any computer existed. - [Claude Shannon: the Father of Information Theory](https://computerscience.co.uk/people/claude-shannon/index.md): Claude Shannon founded information theory, the mathematics behind all digital communication, and showed that logic could be built from electrical switches. - [Grace Hopper: the Programmer Who Made Code Readable](https://computerscience.co.uk/people/grace-hopper/index.md): Grace Hopper built the first compiler and helped create COBOL, turning programming from raw machine code into something written in words. - [John von Neumann: Architect of the Modern Computer](https://computerscience.co.uk/people/john-von-neumann/index.md): John von Neumann set out the stored-program design used by almost every computer since, and did foundational work across mathematics, physics and game theory. - [Linus Torvalds: the Creator of Linux](https://computerscience.co.uk/people/linus-torvalds/index.md): Linus Torvalds created Linux, the operating system that runs most of the internet, and Git, the version control system used across software today. - [Tim Berners-Lee: the Inventor of the World Wide Web](https://computerscience.co.uk/people/tim-berners-lee/index.md): Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 at CERN, giving the internet the pages, links and browsers that turned it into something everyone could use. ## History - [A timeline of computer science](https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/index.md): key dates from Babbage to modern AI - [The Foundations of Computer Science](https://computerscience.co.uk/history/foundations/index.md): In the 1930s and 1940s, Turing, Shannon and von Neumann turned computing into a science, defining what machines could compute and how to build them. - [The Internet Age](https://computerscience.co.uk/history/internet-age/index.md): From ARPANET in 1969 to the World Wide Web and beyond, computing became a global network that reshaped how people work, talk and live. - [The Mechanical Age of Computing](https://computerscience.co.uk/history/mechanical-computing/index.md): Before electronics, computing was mechanical. Babbage's engines and Lovelace's programs imagined the general-purpose computer a century before it could be built. - [The Rise of Programming Languages](https://computerscience.co.uk/history/programming-languages/index.md): As computers spread in the 1950s and 1960s, Grace Hopper and others made them programmable in something closer to human language, from the first compiler to COBOL. - [What Is a Turing Machine?](https://computerscience.co.uk/history/turing-machine/index.md): A Turing machine is a simple imaginary device, described by Alan Turing in 1936, that captures what it means to compute and underpins all of computer science. - [What Is Computer Science?](https://computerscience.co.uk/history/what-is-computer-science/index.md): Computer science is the study of computation: how problems are solved by algorithms, how information is processed, and how hardware and software are designed. - [When Was the First Computer Invented?](https://computerscience.co.uk/history/when-was-the-first-computer-invented/index.md): The first computer was designed in the 1830s by Charles Babbage. The first working electronic computers were built in the 1940s, with ENIAC completed in 1945. - [Who Invented the Computer?](https://computerscience.co.uk/history/who-invented-the-computer/index.md): No single person invented the computer. Charles Babbage designed the first general-purpose computer in the 1800s, and working electronic computers arrived in the 1940s. - [Who Invented the Internet?](https://computerscience.co.uk/history/who-invented-the-internet/index.md): The internet grew from ARPANET in the 1960s, with core protocols by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. The World Wide Web that runs on it was invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. ## Universities - [University of Cambridge](https://computerscience.co.uk/universities/cambridge/index.md): Cambridge taught the world's first university course in computing and remains one of the strongest computer science departments in the United Kingdom. - [Carnegie Mellon University](https://computerscience.co.uk/universities/carnegie-mellon/index.md): Carnegie Mellon ranks in the top ten worldwide for computer science and runs one of the few universities with a full school devoted to the subject. - [Imperial College London](https://computerscience.co.uk/universities/imperial-college-london/index.md): Imperial College London is a top-25 computer science university worldwide in the QS 2026 rankings, and one of the UK's strongest for science and engineering. - [Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)](https://computerscience.co.uk/universities/mit/index.md): MIT is ranked first in the world for computer science in the QS 2026 subject rankings. A look at why, and what studying CS there involves. - [University of Oxford](https://computerscience.co.uk/universities/oxford/index.md): Oxford is ranked joint fourth in the world for computer science in the QS 2026 subject rankings, the top-ranked department in the United Kingdom. - [Stanford University](https://computerscience.co.uk/universities/stanford/index.md): Stanford sits in the top ten worldwide for computer science in the QS 2026 rankings, and its place in Silicon Valley has shaped the whole industry. - [University of California, Berkeley](https://computerscience.co.uk/universities/uc-berkeley/index.md): UC Berkeley is one of the world's leading computer science departments and a public university whose research shaped Unix, databases and processor design. - [Best Computer Science Universities in the UK](https://computerscience.co.uk/universities/united-kingdom/index.md): The top computer science universities in the UK, led by Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London, with sourced rankings and profiles. - [Best Computer Science Schools in the United States](https://computerscience.co.uk/universities/united-states/index.md): The top computer science schools and colleges in the US, from MIT and Stanford to Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley, with sourced rankings and profiles. ## Optional - [Are you an AI agent?](https://computerscience.co.uk/ai/index.md): how to consume this site, citation policy, contact - [Sitemap](https://computerscience.co.uk/sitemap-index.xml)