COMPUTER SCIENTISTS from Japan

Top 4

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Japanese Computer Scientists of all time. This list of famous Japanese Computer Scientists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography's online popularity.

1. Satoshi Nakamoto (b. 1975)

With an HPI of 78.04, Satoshi Nakamoto is the most famous Japanese Computer Scientist.  His biography has been translated into 54 different languages on wikipedia.

Satoshi Nakamoto (fl. 31 October 2008 – 26 April 2011) is the name used by the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, authored the bitcoin white paper, and created and deployed bitcoin's original reference implementation. As part of the implementation, Nakamoto also devised the first blockchain database. Nakamoto was active in the development of bitcoin until December 2010. Nakamoto's true identity is unknown, although various people have been posited as the person or group of people behind his name. His name is Japanese, and his persona suggests a man living in Japan, but many have speculated that he is a software and cryptography expert from the United States or Europe. Assuming he is an individual person, Nakamoto's bitcoin holdings make him one of the world's wealthiest people. His wallet, which has been untouched since 2010, holds an estimated 1.1 million bitcoins. At their July 14, 2025 price of over $123,000 each, Nakamoto's bitcoins were worth nearly $135 billion.

2. Ken Kutaragi (b. 1950)

With an HPI of 64.46, Ken Kutaragi is the 2nd most famous Japanese Computer Scientist.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Ken Kutaragi (久夛良木 健, Kutaragi Ken; born 2 August 1950) is a Japanese engineering technologist and businessman, currently president and CEO of Cyber AI Entertainment. Formerly the chairman and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), the video game division of Sony, Kutaragi is known as "The Father of the PlayStation" having overseen the development of the original console and its successors and spinoffs until departing the company in 2007, shortly after the PlayStation 3 was released. Kutaragi had also designed the sound processor for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. With Sony, he designed the VLSI chip that works in conjunction with the PS1's RISC CPU to handle the graphics rendering.

3. Yukihiro Matsumoto (b. 1965)

With an HPI of 55.09, Yukihiro Matsumoto is the 3rd most famous Japanese Computer Scientist.  His biography has been translated into 31 different languages.

Yukihiro Matsumoto (まつもとゆきひろ, Matsumoto Yukihiro; born 14 April 1965), also known as Matz, is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer best known as the chief designer of the Ruby programming language and its original reference implementation, Matz's Ruby Interpreter (MRI). As of 2011, Matsumoto is the Chief Architect of Ruby at Heroku, an online cloud platform-as-a-service in San Francisco. He is a fellow of the Rakuten Institute of Technology, a research and development organization within Rakuten Group, Inc. He was appointed to the role of technical advisor for VASILY, Inc. starting in June 2014.

4. Chieko Asakawa (b. 1958)

With an HPI of 48.51, Chieko Asakawa is the 4th most famous Japanese Computer Scientist.  Her biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Chieko Asakawa (浅川 智恵子, Asakawa Chieko) is a blind Japanese computer scientist, known for her work at IBM Research – Tokyo in accessibility. A Netscape browser plug-in she developed, the IBM Home Page Reader, became the most widely used web-to-speech system available. She is the recipient of numerous industry and government awards.