Famous Inventors Born in May

Shuji Nakamura

Date of Birth: May 22, 1954

Profession: Japanese-born American electronic engineer and inventor 

Notable Works: He is regarded as the inventor of the blue LED, a major breakthrough in lighting technology. Professor at the Materials Department of the College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Prestigious Honours and Awards: Millennium Technology Prize (2006); Harvey Prize (2009); Nobel Prize in Physics (2014); Global Energy Prize (2015); National Inventors Hall of Fame (2015); Mountbatten Medal (2017); Zayed Future Energy Prize (2018)

Elijah J. McCoy

Date of Birth: May 2, 1844

Profession: Canadian-American engineer, inventor

Notable Works: He invented an automatic lubricator for oiling the steam engines of locomotives and ships, patenting it in 1872 as “Improvement in Lubricators for Steam-Engines” (U.S. Patent 129,843).

Most of his patents dealt with lubricating systems, including a further patent in 1898 which added a glass ‘sight-feed’ tube to monitor the rate of lubricant delivery (U.S. Patent 614,307).

Prestigious Honours and Awards: National Inventors Hall of Fame in Alexandria, Virginia (2001)

Robert Koffler Jarvik

Date of Birth: May 11, 1946

Profession:  American scientist, researcher

Notable Works: He is widely known as the inventor of the first successful permanent artificial heart, the Jarvik 7

Today, Dr. Jarvik is the Chairman and CEO of Jarvik Heart, Inc. He holds numerous patents for medical device technology, and degrees from Syracuse University, New York University, and the University of Utah College of Medicine.

Prestigious Honours and Awards: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement (1983);

Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky

Date of Birth: 25 May 1889

Profession: Ukrainian-American aviation pioneer

Notable Works: He was an aviation pioneer in both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.  

He founded the Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation in the USA (1923), and developed the first of Pan American Airways‘ ocean-crossing flying boats in the 1930s.

In 1939, Sikorsky designed and flew the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, the first viable American helicopter, which pioneered the rotor configuration used by most helicopters today. Sikorsky modified the design into the Sikorsky R-4, which became the world’s first mass-produced helicopter in 1942.

Prestigious Honours and Awards: Order of St. Vladimir; Howard N. Potts Medal (1933); Daniel Guggenheim Medal (1951); ASME Medal (1963); Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy (1966); National Medal of Science (1967); John Fritz Medal (1968)

Ivan E. Sutherland

Date of Birth: May 16, 1938

Profession: American computer scientist and Internet pioneer

Notable Works: He is widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. Sutherland invented Sketchpad in 1962 while at MIT. 

Work with student Danny Cohen in 1967 led to the development of the Cohen–Sutherland computer graphics line clipping algorithm. 

Prestigious Honours and Awards: Turing Award (1988); Computer Pioneer Award (1985); IEEE John von Neumann Medal (1998); Turing Award, 1988; Kyoto Prize 2012; National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductee, 2016; Washington Award, 2018

Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin

Date of Birth: May 12, 1910

Profession:  British chemist; Nobel laureate.

Notable Works: D. Hodgkin won the Nobel Prize for her determination by X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules. She also elucidated the structure of insulin in 1969 after 35 years of work.

Prestigious Honours and Awards: Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1964); Order of Merit (1965); Copley Medal (1976); Dalton Medal (1981); Lomonosov Gold Medal (1982)

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit 

Date of Birth: May 24, 1686

Profession: physicist, inventor, and scientific instrument maker.

Notable Works: A pioneer of exact thermometry, he helped lay the foundations for the era of precision thermometry by inventing the mercury-in-glass thermometer and Fahrenheit scale.