Podcast in English
Text size
Bulgarian National Radio © 2024 All Rights Reserved

120 years since the birth of the inventor of the computer

President Radev to award winners of the John Atanasoff Presidential Award

Atanasoff was of Bulgarian origin

John Vincent Atanasoff (1903 – 1995) inventor of the Atanasoff–Berry Computer.
Photo: Archive

At a special ceremony at the Presidential Palace today, Head of State Rumen Radev will present awards to the winners of the John Atanasov Presidential Award for 2023. The award ceremony will be held on the day marking the 120th anniversary of the birth of the famous inventor of Bulgarian origin and creator of the first electronic computer with regenerative memory. The awards will be presented for the 21st time to pupils, students and young Bulgarian scientists who have shown outstanding results in the field of computer science.

John Vincent Atanasoff was born on October 4, 1903 near Hamilton, New York. His father, Ivan Atanasov, was a Bulgarian immigrant born in the village of Boyadzhik, Yambol region, then in the Ottoman Empire. Ivan's parents died in 1876, at the height of the April Uprising, so in 1889, at the age of 13, he emigrated to America with his uncle. He met John's Iva Lucena Purdy, an English teacher from upstate New York, and they got married in in 1900, following John’s graduation from Colgate College with a degree in philosophy.

Ivan and Lucena's son John became interested in mathematics and logarithms at an early age. He was later recognized as the inventor of the computer. More information on the subject can be found here.



Последвайте ни и в Google News Showcase, за да научите най-важното от деня!
Listen to the daily news from Bulgaria presented in "Bulgaria Today" podcast, available in Spotify.

More from category

Sunny but chilly Sunday

Overnight it will be mostly clear. Winds will weaken and die down in many areas. In the morning it will be cold, with minimum temperatures between minus 7 and minus 2°C, reaching minus 10°C in the valleys and around minus 9°C in Sofia. Tomorrow will be..

published on 11/23/24 7:05 PM

Unit 6 of Kozloduy NPP connected to the national grid after annual maintenance

The planned annual maintenance of Unit 6 of Bulgaria's only NPP, Kozloduy, has been completed. The unit was connected to the national grid at 10:07 following an inspection by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency. In addition to the repairs made to improve..

published on 11/23/24 2:09 PM
Interim minister of the Interior Atanas Ilkov

Bulgaria's full Schengen membership will not open the floodgates to the EU, says Interior Minister

A quadripartite meeting of the interior ministers of Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria and Romania in Budapest on 22 November made it clear that Austria would lift its veto and that Bulgaria and Romania would probably become full members of Schengen from the..

published on 11/23/24 11:58 AM