Computing is the activity of using computer hardware and software.
Computing Curricula 2005 defined "computing" as:
"In a general way, we can define computing to mean any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computers. Thus, computing includes designing and building hardware and software systems for a wide range of purposes; processing, structuring, and managing various kinds of information; doing scientific studies using computers; making computer systems behave intelligently; creating and using communications and entertainment media; finding and gathering information relevant to any particular purpose, and so on. The list is virtually endless, and the possibilities are vast."
The term "computing" has sometimes been narrowly defined, as in a 1989 ACM report on Computing as a Discipline:
The discipline of computing is the systematic study of algorithmic processes that describe and transform information: their theory, analysis, design, efficiency, implementation, and application. The fundamental question underlying all computing is "What can be (efficiently) automated?"
Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter, film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club.
After a troubled childhood and adolescence, during which he was expelled from a number of schools and eventually spent three months in prison for credit card fraud, he was able to secure a place at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature.
He first came to public attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and took the role of Jeeves (with Laurie playing Wooster) in Jeeves and Wooster.
As an actor, Fry played the lead in the film Wilde, was Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, starred as the title character Peter Kingdom in the ITV series Kingdom, has a recurring guest role as Dr. Gordon Wyatt on the Fox crime series Bones and appeared as rogue TV host Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V For Vendetta. He has also written and presented several documentary series including the 2008 television series Stephen Fry in America, which saw him travelling across all 50 US states. Since 2003 he has been the host of the quiz show QI.
Andris Ambainis (born 18 January 1975) is a Latvian computer scientist active in the fields of quantum information theory and quantum computing. He has held past positions at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey and the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. He is currently a professor in the Faculty of Computing at the University of Latvia. He received a Bachelors (1996), Masters (1997), and Doctorate (1997) in Computer Science from the University of Latvia, as well as a Ph.D. (2001) from the University of California, Berkeley. Ambainis has contributed extensively to quantum information processing and foundations of quantum mechanics, mostly through his work on quantum walks and lower bounds for quantum query complexity. In 1991 he received a perfect score and gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad.
Professor Heinz Wolff BSc. FIEE. FIBES FRCP (Hon) FRSA is a German-British scientist, and television and radio presenter who was born in 1928. He is popularly known for his television and radio work, including the TV series The Great Egg Race.
Born in Berlin, 29 April 1928, Wolff's family moved to Britain when he was aged 11. The family arrived on the day World War II broke out. After school at the City of Oxford High School for Boys he worked at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford and at the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit near Cardiff, before going on to University College London, where he gained a first class honours degree in Physiology and Physics.
He spent much of his early career in bioengineering, a term which he himself coined in 1954 to take account of then recent advances in physiology. He became an honorary member of the European Space Agency in 1975, and in 1983 he founded the Brunel Institute for Bioengineering, which is involved in biological research during weightless space-flight. Wolff was the scientific director and co-founder of Project Juno, the private British-Soviet joint venture which sent Helen Sharman to the Mir space station.