Fellow Awards (original) (raw)
Honoring the Past. Inspiring the Future.
The CHM Fellow Awards honor distinguished technology pioneers—unsung heroes and legends—for their outstanding merits and significant contributions to the advancement of computing and the evolution of the digital age. This prestigious program is supported with collecting, education, research, and media activities that reflect the seminal work of each Fellow and preserves their stories for future generations.
Fellow Awards Is Moving
The CHM Fellow Awards will take place in the spring of next year, 2026.
We are currently in the process of selecting the 2026 Fellows and will announce the honorees in the coming months. Stay tuned!
Fellow Nominations
Now Accepting nominations for the 2027 Fellow Awards.
Fellow nominations are open to the public and reflect a diverse range of viewpoints and areas of computing. Final selection is made by a panel of historians, researchers, industry leaders, CHM staff, and past Fellow Award honorees.
Selection Criteria and Process
This public nomination process helps CHM to identify qualified candidates who best fit the selection criteria. By drawing on the cumulative industry knowledge of our community, the written nomination process helps to document and enrich our understanding of candidates’ contributions.
Review our selection criteria and process.
Sponsorship
Event sponsors enjoy an elite and powerful opportunity to take their place among other industry leaders, to communicate with a renowned and influential audience, and to show their support of the honorees at CHM, the premier institution that preserves and interprets the pivotal objects and stories of the computing revolution.
Contact us to learn more about sponsorship opportunities for our Fellow Awards Program.
Fellow Awards: A CHM Tradition
Fellow Awards
Inaugural Fellow Grace Hopper and Gwen Bell, 1987
The Fellow Awards were started in 1987 by Gwen Bell, cofounder of Boston’s The Computer Museum (TCM), precursor to CHM. TCM named Admiral Grace Murray Hopper as its first Fellow for her essential role in developing programming languages and standardization efforts.
Fellow Awards
Fellow Awards programs from the CHM institutional archive, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006
The Fellow Awards are a Museum-wide effort. Every detail is scrutinized to make sure the evening is a success, including program and invitation design.
Fellow Awards
Fellows Collection and Archive
Continuous work by our curatorial, collections, and media teams goes toward creating and maintaining a substantial archive of our Fellows that includes oral histories, artifacts, and documents.
Top to bottom, left to right: cover page from the 1963 PhD dissertation of 2005 Fellow Ivan Sutherland detailing his Sketchpad system; 1968 head-mounted display, which gave its wearer the illusion of a 3-D scene, by Ivan Sutherland; and Dov Frohman-Bentchkowsky interviewed by CHM in Treviso, Italy, on February 2, 2018.
Collection of the Computer History Museum, 102726907, X1044.90, and 102738721.
Fellow Awards
Dr. Yvonne Cagle Accepts 2019 Fellow Award on Behalf of NASA’s Katherine Johnson
Dr. Yvonne Cagle, NASA astronaut, accepts the CHM Fellow Award on behalf of her heroine NASA mathematician and “hidden figure no longer” Katherine Johnson. Johnson was honored at the Museum’s 2019 Fellow Awards gala for her exceptional calculations during the US space programs that brought the first humans to the Moon.
Watch Cagle’s moving acceptance speech
Fellow Awards
Hall of Fellows
The stories of our Fellow Award honorees are preserved for future generations in our Hall of Fellows. Past Fellows include NASA’s Margaret Hamilton, the World Wide Web’s Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Pixar’s Ed Catmull, SRI’s Doug Engelbart, NASA’s Katherine Johnson, and Apple’s Steve Wozniak.
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