Awards & Achievements

IBM's rich history of discovery and innovation has brought international recognition. In addition to five Nobel prizes, IBM researchers have been recognized with seven U.S. National Medals of Technology, five National Medals of Science and 21 memberships in the National Academy of Sciences. IBM Research has more than 59 members of the National Academy of Engineering and well over 300 industry organization fellows. This year, IBM's own Frances Allen became the first woman to receive a Turing Award. The company has seen 6 Turing recipients in total, as well as 8 inductees in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

1990  -  Harry Markowitz (link resides outside of ibm.com), American finance and economics educator, cowinner (with Merton H. Miller and William F. Sharpe) of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Economics for theories on evaluating stock-market risk and reward and on valuing corporate stocks and bonds.

1987  -  J. Georg Bednorz and K. Alex Müller were awarded a Nobel Prize for their discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in a new class of materials. They discovered that a particular class of oxides can conduct electricity without resistance at temperatures significantly higher than previously acheived. Applications of high-temperature superconductors include devices to measure extremely small magnetic fields, which can be used for geophysical exploration and medical diagnostic procedures.

1986  -  Gerd K. Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their invention of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope, which could provide atomic resolution images of surfaces.

1973  -  Leo Esaki was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of the electron tunneling effect in semiconductors. Esaki was the co-inventor of semiconductor superlattices and explored the extraordinary properties of these engineered quantum structures.

The A.M. Turing Award is the Association for Computing Machinery's (link resides outside of ibm.com) most prestigious technical award. It is given to an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community.

2006  -  Frances E. Allen for pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques that laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution.

1999  -  Frederick P. Brooks for landmark contributions to computer architecture, operating systems, and software engineering.

1987  -  John Cocke for significant contributions in the design and theory of compilers, the architecture of large systems and the development of reduced instruction set computers (RISC); for discovering and systematizing many fundamental transformations now used in optimizing compilers including reduction of operator strength, elimination of common subexpressions, register allocation, constant propagation, and dead code elimination.

1981  -  Edgar F. Codd for his fundamental and continuing contributions to the theory and practice of database management systems. He originated the relational approach to database management in a series of research papers published commencing in 1970. His paper "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" was a seminal paper, in a continuing and carefully developed series of papers. Dr. Codd built upon this space and in doing so has provided the impetus for widespread research into numerous related areas, including database languages, query subsystems, database semantics, locking and recovery, and inferential subsystems.

1979  -  Kenneth E. Iverson for his pioneering effort in programming languages and mathematical notation resulting in what the computing field now knows as APL, for his contributions to the implementation of interactive systems, to educational uses of APL, and to programming language theory and practice.

1977  -  John Backus for profound, influential, and lasting contributions to the design of practical high-level programming systems, notably through his work on FORTRAN, and for seminal publication of formal procedures for the specification of programming languages.

National Medal of Technology - Awarded by the President of the United States for promotion of technology or technological manpower.

National Medal of Science - Awarded by the President of the United States for outstanding contributions to knowledge in the physical, biological, mathematical, or engineering sciences.

Wolf Foundation Prize

Six prizes awarded every year to outstanding scientists and artists for achievements in agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, and physics for science and in the Arts, the prize rotates annually among music, painting, sculpture and architecture. $100,000 and a certificate.

1993  -  Benoit Mandelbrot

The Franklin Medal

The Franklin Institute's highest honor for those working in physical science or technology, and whose efforts have done most to advance a knowledge of physical science or its applications. Established in 1914. Gold Medal. Awarded annually.

2007  -  Robert Dennard
1986  -  Benoit Mandelbrot

IBM highest technical honor is the designation of IBM Fellow. Fellows are selected for sustained and distinguished technical achievements in engineering, programming and technology. Since the program began in 1963, only 194 people have been designated IBM Fellows. Fellows are granted a wide sphere of independence in the pursuit of their research.

IBM Fellows have invented some of the industry's most useful and profitably applied technologies. Few computer users may realize how much of this group's innovations have created the computer technology we take for granted.

In 2007, six new Fellows were named. There are currently 67 active employees who are IBM Fellows.

For the past 15 years, IBM has been awarded the most U.S. patents. In 2007, the company earned 3,125 patents. In 2006 -- with 3,621 patents -- IBM set the record for the most U.S. patents earned in a single year.

To help ensure that reforms, such as patent quality, are appropriately balanced for all constituents, IBM will hold an "Inventors' Forum," an online initiative to enable representatives of a broad segment of the invention community to share ideas, learn from the experience of others, and influence reform in ways that take the needs of their businesses into account.

Highlights of IBM's 2007 patent story.
Delphion Intellectual Property Network (link resides outside of ibm.com) for all U.S. patents.