An IBM Fellow is a position at
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
appointed by the
CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June.
Fellow
A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...
is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve.
Overview

The IBM Fellows program was founded in 1962 by
Thomas Watson Jr., as a way to promote creativity among the company's "most exceptional" technical professionals and is granted in recognition of outstanding and sustained technical achievements and leadership in engineering, programming, services, science, design and technology.
[IBM Fellows homepage on IBM.com](_blank)
/ref> The first appointments were made in 1963.
The criteria for appointment are stringent and take into account only the most-significant technical achievements. In addition to a history of extraordinary accomplishments, candidates must also be considered to have the potential to make continued contributions. Francis E. Hamilton is believed to be the first IBM Fellow, appointed in 1963 for amongst other things his work on the development of the IBM 650
The IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Data-Processing Machine is an early digital computer produced by IBM in the mid-1950s. It was the first mass-produced computer in the world. Almost 2,000 systems were produced, the last in 1962, and it was the firs ...
.["There are but a few," IBM Corporation, 1981] In 1989, Fran Allen became the first female IBM Fellow.
IBM Fellows are given broad latitude to identify and pursue projects in their area of expertise.
, only 331 IBMers have earned the IBM Fellow distinction, and 84 of them remain active IBM employees. IBM Fellows have generated over 9,329 patents and thousands of government and professional citations, received five Nobel Prizes
The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred ...
and five Turing Awards, and created a massive store of published research in scientific journals.
List
In chronological order, :
*Francis E. Hamilton (1963)
*Ronald D. Dodge (1963)
*C.R. Doty, Sr. (1963)
*Clyde J. Fitch (1963)
*John Backus
John Warner Backus (December 3, 1924 – March 17, 2007) was an American computer scientist. He led the team that invented and implemented FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language, and was the inventor of the Backus–N ...
(1963)
*Genung L. Clapper (1963)
*Lewellyn H. Thomas (1963)
*Ralph L. Palmer (1963)
* Ralph E. Gomory (1964)
* Robert Henle (1964)
*James A. Weidenhammer (1964)
*Laurence A. Wilson (1964)
*Jonas E. Dayger (1964)
* Gene Amdahl (1965)
* Reynold B. Johnson (1965)
* Stephen W. Dunwell (1966)
*George T. Judson (1966)
*James M. Brownlow (1967)
*George F. Daly (1967)
* Wallace Eckert (1967)
* Leo Esaki (1967)
* Richard L. Garwin (1967)
*Jean Ghertman (1967)
*Evon C. Greanias (1967)
*Edward J. Rabenda (1967)
* Nathaniel Rochester (1967)
*Walter Buslik (1968)
*L.R. Harper (1968) [David W. Kean, "IBM San Jose A Quarter Century of Innovation" IBM Corp. circa 1977]
* Peter Sorokin (1968)
*Leon E. Palmer
*E. Alan Brown (1969)
*H.G. Kolsky (1969)
* Rolf Landauer (1969)
* Herman Goldstine (1969)
*Jacob Riseman (1969)*
see Directory
*Charles E. Owen (1969)
*Wouter Vanderkulk (1969)
*D. DeWitt (1970)
* Enrico Clementi (1970)
*Victor R. Witt (1970)
* Kenneth E. Iverson (1971)
* J. B. Gunn (1971)
*Joseph C. Logue (1971)
*Bill Beausoleil (1972)
* John Cocke (1972)
* Shmuel Winograd (1972)
* Harlan Mills (1973)
*R.G. Brewer (1973)
*Robert A. Nelson (1973)
*William E. Harding (1973)
*Dean Eastman (1974)
* Jack Harker (1974)
*Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of #Fractals and the ...
(1974)
*Charles F. Borteck (1974)
*Harold Fleisher (1974)
*Otto G. Folberth (1974)
*A.R. Heller (1975)
* Henri Nussbaumer (1975)
*Joseph P. Pawletko (1975)
* James H. Pomerene (1976)
*Edgar F. Codd
Edgar Frank "Ted" Codd (19 August 1923 – 18 April 2003) was a British computer scientist who, while working for IBM, invented the relational model for database management, the theoretical basis for relational databases and relational database ...
(1976)
* Heinz Zemanek (1976)
*Carl A. Queener (1976)
*Donald K. Rex (1977)
*Thomas H Simpson (1977)
* Alec N. Broers (1977)
* Alan J. Hoffman (1978)
* Robert Dennard (1979)
* Siegfried K. Wiedmann (1979)
*David E. Cuzner (1979)
* David A. Thompson (1980)
*Richard E. Blahut (1980)
* George Radin (1980)
*Robert E. Pattison (1980)
*Donald Seraphim (1981)
* Edward H. Sussenguth (1981)
*Janusz S. Wilczynski (1981)
* K. Alex Müller (1982)
* Edward B. Eichelberger (1982)
*Richard Chu (1983)
* Alan Fowler (1983)
* Charles Denis Mee (1983)
*Werner Kulcke (1983)
*James P. Gray (1984)
* Allan L. Scherr (1984)
*Mu-Yue (Ben) Hsiao (1984)
*Rao R. Tummala (1984)
* Gottfried Ungerboeck (1984)
* Hans Pfeiffer (1985)
* Jerry Woodall (1985)
* G. Glenn Henry (1985)
*C. Grant Willson (1985)
* Gerd Binnig (1986)
*Dale L. Critchlow (1986)
*James M. Kasson (1986)
*Heinrich Rohrer
Heinrich Rohrer (6 June 1933 – 16 May 2013) was a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The other half of the Prize was awarded to Ernst R ...
(1986)
*Arvind M. Patel (1986)
* Lubomyr Romankiw (1986)
* Georg Bednorz (1987)
*Edwin R. Lassettre (1987)
*Paul E. Totta (1987)
*Karl Hermann (1987)
* Nick Pippenger (1987)
*Bernard R. Aken, Jr. (1988)
*Michael Hatzakis (1988)
*James L. Walsh (1988)
*Larry Loucks (1989)
*Alfred Cutaia (1989)
* Frances E. Allen (1989)
* Donald Haderle (1989)
*Russell Lange (1989)
* Michael F. Cowlishaw (1990)
*J. Kent Howard (1990)
* Ellis L. Johnson (1990)
*Howard L. Kalter (1990)
*Randolph G. Scarborough (1990)
* Marc Auslander (1991)
*Richard Baum (1991)
*Tak Ning (1991)
*H. Bernhard Pogge (1991)
*Paul H. Bardell (1991)
*Bernard Meyerson (1992)
* Don Eigler (1993)
* Peter Kogge (1993)
*Anthony Temple (1993)
*Charles R. Hoffman (1993)
*Martin E. Hopkins (1993)
*James T Brady (1993)
* Diane Pozefsky (1994)
* Patricia Selinger (1994)
*Celia Yeack-Scranton (1994)
*Johann Greschner (1994)
*Richard R. Oehler (1994)
* Charles H. Bennett (1995)
* Mark E. Dean (1995)
*Michael D. Swanson (1995)
*Ching H. Tsang (1995)
*Brian E. Clark (1996)
* Bijan Davari (1996)
*James Rymarczyk (1996)
* Ted Selker (1996)
*Bruce Lindsay (1996)
*Yutaka Tsukada (1996)
*Ramesh Agarwal (1997)
* Jean Calvignac (1997)
*C. Mohan
Chandrasekaran Mohan is an Indian-born American computer scientist. He was born on 3 August 1955 in Tamil Nadu, India. After growing up there and finishing his undergraduate studies in Chennai, he moved to the United States in 1977 for graduat ...
(1997)
*Ramesh C. Agarwal (1997)
*Cesar A. Gonzales (1998)
*Steven R. Hetzler (1998)
* Tze-Chiang Chen (1999)
* Irene Greif (1999)
*Alex Morrow (1999)
* Stuart Parkin (1999)
*Hamid Pirahesh (1999)
*Gururaj S. Rao (1999)
*Nicholas Shelness (1999)
*Carl J. Anderson (2000)
*Josephine M. Cheng (2000)
*H. Kumar Wickramasinghe (2000)
* Ravi K. Arimilli (2001)
* Donald F. Ferguson (2001)
* Jai M. Menon (2001)
* Joan L. Mitchell (2001)
*Arimasa Naitoh (2001)
*Jeffrey M. Nick (2001)
* Ghavam Shahidi (2001)
* Rakesh Agrawal (2002)
*Michael H. Hartung (2002)
* James A. Kahle (2002)
*Maurice J. Perks (2002)
*Anthony A. Storey (2002)
* Grady Booch (2003)
* Donald D. Chamberlin (2003)
* George M. Galambos (2003)
*Rodney A. Smith (2003)
*Charles F. Webb (2003)
* Phaedon Avouris (2004)[“Five top innovators named IBM Fellows”](_blank)
IBM. 2004.
*Curt L. Cotner (2004)
*David L. Harame (2004)
*Audrey A. Helffrich (2004)
*Kevin A. Stoodley (2004)
* Evangelos S. Eleftheriou (2005)
*Larry M. Ernst (2005)
* Ed Kahan (2005)
*Bradley D. McCredie (2005)
*Yun Wang (2005)
*Thomas M. Bradicich (2006)[“IBM Appoints Eight New Fellows to Drive Innovation”](_blank)
IBM. 2006.
* John Maxwell Cohn (2006)
* Gennaro A. Cuomo (2006)
*Daniel C. Edelstein (2006)
*Alan Gara (2006)
*Ray Harishankar (2006)
* Kerrie L. Holley (2006)
*Carol A. Jones (2006)
* Brenda L. Dietrich (2007)
*David B. Lindquist (2007)
*Martin P. Nally (2007)
*Edward J. Seminaro (2007)
* Mark N. Wegman (2007)
*Chris C. Winter (2007)
*Emmanuel Crabbé (2008)
*Robert H. High Jr. (2008)
*Hiroshi Ito (2008)
*Susan L. Miller-Sylvia (2008)
*David Nahamoo (2008)
*Pratap Pattnaik (2008)
*Thomas L. Seevers (2008)
* Moshe Yanai (2008)
*Harry M. Yudenfriend (2008)
* Nicholas M. Donofrio (2008)
* Chieko Asakawa (2009) [“IBM Honors Eight Employees with Highest Technical Award”](_blank)
IBM. 2009.
* Laura M. Haas (2009)
*Michael A. Kaczmarski (2009)
*Hung Q. Le (2009)
*Roger R. Schmidt (2009)
* Martín-J Sepúlveda (2009)
*Satya P. Sharma (2009)
*Tim J. Vincent (2009)
*James C. Colson (2010)
*Jeffrey A. Frey (2010)
*Alfred Grill (2010)
*Subramanian Iyer (2010)
*Anant D. Jhingran (2010)
*Charles Johnson (2010)
* David Ferrucci (2011)
*Renato Recio (2011)
*Bradford Brooks (2011)
*Steven W Hunter (2011)
*Nagui Halim (2011)
*Stefan Pappe (2011)
*Wolfgang Roesner (2011)
*Bob Blainey (2011)
*Luba Cherbakov (2012)[2012 IBM Fellows](_blank)
IBM.
*Paul Coteus (2012)
*Ronald Fagin
Ronald Fagin (born 1945) is an American mathematician and computer scientist, and IBM Fellow at the IBM Almaden Research Center. He is known for his work in database theory, finite model theory, and reasoning about knowledge.
Biography
Ron F ...
(2012)
*Vincent Hsu (2012)
*Jeff Jonas (2012)
* Ruchir Puri (2012)
*Balaram Sinharoy (2012)
*Neil Bartlett (2013)
*Jon Casey (2013)
* Monty Denneau (2013)
*Jason McGee (2013)
*John Ponzo (2013)
* Heike Riel (2013)
* Dinesh Verma (2013)
*Chandu Visweswariah (2013)
*Sandy Bird (2014) [2014 IBM Fellows](_blank)
/ref>
*Rhonda Childress (2014)
*Alessandro Curioni (2014)
* Tamar Eilam (2014)
*Mike Haydock (2014)
*Namik Hrle (2014)
* Dharmendra Modha (2014)
* Aleksandra Mojsilović (2014)
*Krishna Ratakonda (2014)
*Shivakumar Vaithyanathan (2014)
*Andy Walls (2014)
*Donna Dillenberger (2015) [2015 IBM Fellows](_blank)
/ref>
*Chitra Dorai (2015)
*Michael Factor (2015)
*Steve Fields (2015)
*Mickey Iqbal (2015)
*Bala Rajaraman (2015)
*Berni Schiefer (2015)
*James Sexton (2015)
*Jing Shyr (2015)
*John Smith (2015)
*Mac Devine (2016) [2016 IBM Fellows](_blank)
/ref>
*Blaine Dolph (2016)
*Stacy Joines (2016)
*Shankar Kalyana (2016)
*Adam Kocoloski (2016)
*Bill Kostenko (2016)
*JR Rao (2016)
*Salim Roukos (2016)
*Ajay Royyuru (2016)
*Gosia Steinder (2016)
* Tanveer Syeda-Mahmood (2016)
* Charlie Hill (2017) [2017 IBM Fellows](_blank)
/ref>
* Dakshi Agrawal (2017)
* Ed Calusinski (2017)
* Hillery Hunter (2017)
* Hugo M. Krawczyk (2017)
* Matt Huras (2017)
* Matthias Steffen (2017)
* Rachel Reinitz (2017)
* Sam Lightstone (2017)
* Sridhar Muppidi (2017)
*Eric Herness (2017)
* Harry Kolar (2018)[''"2018 IBM Fellows"''](_blank)
IBM. Retrieved 2018-04-13.
* Jay Gambetta (2018)
* Jianying Hu (2018)
* Kyle Brown (2018)
* Mike Williams (2018)
* Paul Taylor (2018)
* Teresa Hamid (2018)
* Vijay Narayanan (2018)
* Ann Corrao (2019)
* Chris Ferris (2019)
* Elpida Tzortzatos (2019)
* Gustavo Stolovitzky (2019)
* Laxmi Parida (2019)
* Ram Viswanathan (2019)
* Rama Akkiraju (2019)
* Rashik Parmar (2019)
*Mohamed Ahmed (2020)
*Ajay Apte (2020)
*Andreas Bieswanger (2020)
*Catherine Crawford (2020)
*Nduwuisi Emuchay (2020)
*Marc Fiammante (2020)
*Kailash Gopalakrishnan (2020)
*Jim Olson (2020)
*Emi Olsson (2020)
* Francesca Rossi (2020)
*Ranjan Sinha (2020)
*Faried Abrahams (2021)
*Roland Barcia (2021)
*Sergey Bravyy (2021)
*Oliver Dial (2021)
*Andrew Hately (2021)
*Nataraj Nagaratnam (2021)
*Tetsuya Nikami (2021)
* Maja Vuković (2021)
*Vita Bortnikov (2022)
* Jerry Chow (2022)
*Christian Jacobi (2022)
*AB Vijay Kumar (2022)
*Marcel Mitran (2022)
*Rosalind Radcliffe (2022)
*Kyle Charlet (2023)
*Natsumi Kurashima (2023)
*Effendi Leobandung (2023)
*Brian Martin (2023)
*Aaron Baughman (2024)
*Trent Gray-Donald (2024)
*Kush Varshney (2024)
Notes
References
*The Corporate Technical Recognition Event (CTRE) commemorative book for each year lists the IBM Fellows designated in that year. In 2009, a similar Corporate Technical Recognition (CTR) book was published, but there was no CTRE. The following have been used to verify the names and dates for those years in the list above:
**IBM CTRE Book, June 5–8, 1984, San Francisco, California
**IBM CTRE Book, May 11–14, 1987, Orlando, Florida
**IBM CTRE Book, May 16–19, 1988
**IBM CTRE Book, June 4–7, 1990, San Diego, California
**IBM CTRE Book, June 5–8, 1995, San Diego, California
**IBM CTRE Book, June 9–12, 1998, San Francisco, California
**IBM CTRE Book, June 8–11, 1999, Naples, Florida
**IBM CTRE Book, June 5–8, 2000
**IBM CTRE Book, May 29–June 1, 2001, Palm Beach, Florida
**IBM CTRE Book, June 4–7, 2002, Naples, Florida
**IBM CTRE Book, June 2–5, 2003, Scottsdale, Arizona
**IBM CTRE Book, May 25–28, 2004, Boca Raton, Florida
**IBM CTRE Book, May 24–27, 2005
**IBM CTRE Book, May 23–26, 2006
**IBM CTRE Book, May 14–17, 2007
**IBM CTRE Book, May 12–15, 2008, Phoenix, Arizona
**IBM CTR Book, individually distributed, 2009
**IBM CTR Book, individually distributed, 2010
External links
IBM Fellows
IBM Fellows Directory
{{IBM
Fellow
A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...
he:IBM#עמית IBM