During my last year in college, I had my first encounter with Alan Turing from the cover of a text book, Elements of the Theory of Computation (2nd Edition). He is widely considered to be the father of computer science and the most prestigious computing award, which is widely considered to be the Nobel Prize in the computing field, is named after him. It's the Turing Award, which recently announced the 2004 winners, and from which I learned that there is the first Chinese winner, Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, who is awarded in 2000.