One of the most influential men you’ve never heard of:

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center said Wednesday that George Pake, the founder of PARC who oversaw the development of what would be several common computing technologies, died at 79.


Dr. Pake is best known for leading the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) from its inception in 1970 until 1978 and overseeing Xerox Corporate Research from 1978-1986. He was responsible for fashioning an institution whose unique and enduring culture spawned such innovations as laser printing, Ethernet, the graphical user interface, client-server architecture and many of the ideas that define modern computing.

The top link is to the news story on Yahoo and the bottom is to Xerox’s PARC website.