Miller Puckette
The mathematician who wrote both Max and Pure Data, giving computer music its boxes and patch cords.
Puckette wrote Max at IRCAM in Paris in the second half of the 1980s and named it after Max Mathews. The idea was that musicians would program by drawing cords between boxes on screen rather than typing code, roughly like patching a modular synth. The commercial branch became Max/MSP, now owned by Cycling '74.
At UC San Diego in 1996 he started over with Pure Data: the same core idea, but open source and with audio, video and data in one graph. Pd lives on in installations, games and embedded systems. He also wrote a textbook on electronic music that is freely available online.