7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7

In 1956 Kilburn started his most ambitious project,
MUSE, renamed Atlas when Ferranti joined the project in

1959. In parallel with two similar projects in the United
      States (LARC and Stretch) but largely independent of
      them, Atlas made the massive jump from running one
      program at a time to multiprogramming. With multi-
      programming a computer can “interleave” several programs,
      allocating various computer resources (memory, storage,
      input, and output) to each program through an operating
      system. Atlas was also the first computer to employ a tech-
      nique, now known as virtual memory or virtual storage, of
      using some slower external memory (such as magnetic
      drums) as though it were an extension of the computer’s
      faster internal memory. Operational by 1962, Atlas was
      probably the most sophisticated computer of its time.
      In 1964 Kilburn created the first department of com-
      puter science in the United Kingdom. In 1966 he started
      his last computer project, MU5. Operational by 1972,
      MU5 pioneered an architecture geared to the require-
      ments of high-level languages (languages with more
      humanlike syntax).
      Kilburn was made a professor in 1960 and was elected
      a fellow of the Royal Society in 1965. He retired in 1981.

Stephanie Kwolek

(b. July 23, 1923, New Kensington, Pa., U.S.)

A

merican chemist Stephanie Louise Kwolek was a
pioneer in polymer research whose work yielded
Kevlar, an ultrastrong and ultrathick material best known
for its use in bulletproof vests.
Kwolek’s father, a foundry worker, died when she was
10 years old, and her mother raised her and a brother
alone. In 1946 she received a Bachelor of Science degree in
chemistry from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now