Eric J. Bina (born October 1964) is an American software programmer who is the co-creator of

Mosaic A mosaic () is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/Mortar (masonry), mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and ...

and the co-founder of

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was o ...

. In 1993, Bina along with

Marc Andreessen Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American businessman and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and ...

authored the first version of Mosaic while working as a

programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles Software development, ''software developer'' and Software engineering, ''software engineer' ...

National Center for Supercomputing Applications The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is a unit of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and provides high-performance computing resources to researchers in the United States. NCSA is currently led by Professor Bill ...

(NCSA) at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

. Bina attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating from there with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

in 1986 and a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

in 1988. He joined NCSA in 1991 as a programmer. There, Bina and Andreessen started working on Mosaic in December 1992 and had a working version by March 1993. Mosaic was posted to the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

and is famed as the first

killer application A killer application (often shortened to killer app) is any software that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as its host computer hardware, video game console, software platform, or operatin ...

that popularized the Internet. He is one of the five inaugural inductees to the World Wide Web Hall of Fame announced at the

first international conference on the World Wide Web First International Conference on the World-Wide Web (also known as WWW1) was the first-ever conference about the World Wide Web, and the first meeting of what became the International World Wide Web Conference. It was held on May 25 to 27, 199 ...

in 1994. In 1995, Bina and Andreessen were awarded the ACM Software System Award. In 2010, Bina and Andreessen were inducted into the University of Illinois Engineering Hall of Fame.

References

Sources

Inventor of the Week Archive
1964 births Living people American computer programmers Grainger College of Engineering alumni Internet pioneers Netscape people American technology company founders 20th-century American businesspeople Netscape {{US-compu-bio-stub