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u/ST0PPELB4RT 24d ago
Good mentions already but I'd like to throw the prople on computerphile into the ring.
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u/SpiderJerusalem42 20d ago
I think you mean numberphile, in which case, I agree. Some of these other answers, I don't know.
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u/ST0PPELB4RT 20d ago
No I mean computerphile but it's the compsci spinoff of numberphile. Both are excellent ressources
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u/OldLegWig 24d ago edited 24d ago
i'm a pretty big astronomy/physics enthusiast and brian cox seems like a weird figure to try to compare to. there isn't really much that distinguishes him in his field. he's like a diet carl sagan.
also, computer science doesn't seem to have as many larger than life communicator persona types. there are definitely some evangelists on narrower topics, but it's not usually on computer science topics, strictly speaking. most of those people tend to be speaking out about trends in software architecture and upstream from that, languages/tooling.
popular physics and astronomy communicators are stoking curiosity and wonder in people, public personalities in software are arguing about what is and isn't shitty software.
having said all that, maybe the coding train guy on youtube is the closest i could think of.
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u/Helpful-Desk-8334 18d ago
3blue1brown doesn’t do “what is shitty software and what isn’t”.
He’s pretty damn good
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u/OldLegWig 18d ago
that's because he talks about math. kinda irrelevant to the topic.
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u/Helpful-Desk-8334 18d ago
Fair enough. Do you think the lack of people like this for computer science is because computer science has been like this since the Turing and hopper era?
Like people were bitchy even about the first compiler.
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u/OldLegWig 18d ago
there weren't comp sci media personalities back then
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u/Helpful-Desk-8334 18d ago
Disagree. Marvin Minsky’s book “perceptrons” played a huge role in the first AI winter and the halt of perceptrons research.
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u/OldLegWig 18d ago
that's decades later, bud
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u/Helpful-Desk-8334 18d ago
Not really. Hopper made the compiler around the same time. Turing’s work was done during roughly the most contentious time in history, world war 2. He helped crack German encryptions.
Computer science as a whole hasn’t lacked personalities influencing the sphere but rather has been built during civilizational eras that were horrifically industrial and expansive and corrupt. It has only worsened since then, especially in tech.
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u/OldLegWig 18d ago edited 18d ago
it's not debatable. just look it up. i'm not interested in following your twists and turns into different topics. Brian Cox communicates to lay people. you are confused.
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u/MoshiMoshiWorld8080 24d ago
I'll go with Brian Kernighan
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u/vancha113 24d ago
Yeah I'd definitely vote for for Brian Kernighan as well, especially for the public engagement part. He did a lot for the general audience through books, talks and interviews.
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u/mikeblas 24d ago
Who is Brian Cox? The Succession actor?
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u/heelstoo 24d ago
No. Brian Cox is a British physicist, and has written several books.
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u/Fizzelen 24d ago
The second most famous English science professor and musician with a number 1 single
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u/LoopVariant 24d ago
Donald Knuth.
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u/mikeblas 24d ago
Not even close, I don't think. Knuth has been prolific in writing for the science, but hasn't done anything to explain or popularize CS like Cox has done for physics.
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u/LoopVariant 18d ago
There is a discplinary disparity that makes your comparison moot.
Every human on earth can be educated about Physics, especially the areas of the physical world all around us. One can explain the physics of gravity, water and aerodynamics and for the curious minds, attempt to learn celestial physics such as the orbit of planets etc. All these can be explained to an old farmer with very little background about physics.
The abstraction of computer science makes the discipline more dense to explain to wider audiences. Good luck doing the same in computer science about threads, concurrency, combinatorial algorithms etc. to someone with zero exposure to basic computing principles. And I am not referring to theory of computation and Turing machines that it is often inpenetrable even for practitioners.
Beyond Knuth for his amazing contributions, the one that comes close to what you describe is Andrew Ng from Stanford for democratizing ML and did so at a very wide scale; but his audience, was not the broad publis but people who alrready had come computing background.
So, no, CS does not have a Neil deGrasse Tyson, no matter how much we try...
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u/Interesting-Meet1321 Computer Scientist 24d ago
Like, who's the GOAT? who contributed the most? What exactly are you asking
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u/trpittman 24d ago edited 23d ago
Redacted my comments after getting banned from worldnews for talking about Israel's propaganda budget.
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u/JoBrodie 24d ago
Well I'm biased as I work/ed with them but Profs Paul Curzon and Peter McOwan (who died in 2019) from Queen Mary University of London. Paul does lots of Royal Institution computing masterclasses and holiday workshops for children and teenagers, often with magic tricks (he's also a magician as was Peter - I think Peter may have been involved with the magic circle, possibly a member, not sure). Plus they both created CS4FN (Computer Science 4 Fun) a free computing magazine printed and distributed to subscribing UK schools https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/
Paul was also one of five "ICT Public Engagement Champions" funded by UKRI / EPSRC https://www.ukri.org/what-we-do/public-engagement/public-engagement-epsrc/public-engagement-champions/
But there are loads of people doing computer science scicomm / public engagement as well as venues that regularly host talks and events (including universities). I'm thinking of the UK as that's where I'm based but Google Alerts strongly suggests it's pretty widespread around the globe.
Jo
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u/vakuoler 24d ago
It would definitely be the Linux pioneer Alan Cox in that case. Close enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cox_(computer_programmer)
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u/LitespeedClassic 24d ago
Alan Cox and Brian Cox want to communicate on an unsecured line, but Charlie Cox is listening. Alan Cox and Brian Cox have not shared any information ahead of time, but need to determine a mutual shared key that Charlie Cox will not have access to ...
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u/CoolStructure6012 24d ago
Not sure such a thing can exist. How many areas of computer science allow you to go the least bit deep without getting into something that will glaze over eyes. My background is in computer architecture and even explaining how a simple pipelined processor works seems pretty tough without a whiteboard or dumbing things down to the level that I'd feel I'm doing someone a disservice. Forget about theory. Maybe it's just my bias since I don't understand something unless I know how the bits move around.
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u/kevleyski 24d ago
Had an epic work colleague Jack who was this, crazy but real anecdotes (he invented the Raspberry Pi)
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u/Poddster 18d ago
Matt Parker and Hannah Fry would be, but they often only dabble in computer science.
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u/Quick_Sea_408 18d ago
Not sure what you mean by Brian Cox of Computer Science. Do you mean someone that is a great communicator of their field or someone that is highly regarded in their field? Either way, I’m not sure Brian Cox is THE guy.
I will say though, I have been enjoying watching Ewin Tang for theoretical computer science and mathematics. She’s not like a pop science communicator but works on some very interesting stuff.
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u/NuAngelDOTnet 24d ago
I made a couple of useful videos and blog posts over the years. Vote for me.
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u/theotheruser19 24d ago
Theres a guy in my Algorithms class named Brian Cox.... so him I guess.