A writer of science fiction, Arthur Charles Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England, in 1917. Clarke studied at King's College in London, and worked in scientific research before turning his attention to writing fiction. Clarke's first book was Prelude to Space in 1951, but he is best known for his book 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was later turned into a highly successful and controversial film under the direction of Stanley Kubrick. Some of Clarke's later works include the sequels to 2001, 2010: A Space Odyssey II, 2062: Odyssey III, and 3001: The Final Odyssey, and the novels The Garden of Rama and The Snows of Olympus. Clarke emigrated to Sri Lanka in the 1950s.
The principal architect of the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), Steve Northover joined IBM OTI Labs in 1990. He is an expert on performance, programming for operating systems, and native user interface toolkits. Steve was the principal architect of Common Widgets--the user interface toolkit used by IBM Smalltalk--and the implementer of Common Widgets for Windows and OS/2. Mike Wilson has been a part of IBM OTI Labs since its inception in 1987 as Object Technology International, Inc. Over the years he has played a major part in many of the company's most significant successes, including contributing to and leading the design, implementation, and maintenance of SWT. Currently, he is active in… several Eclipse projects, including the Eclipse Project Management Committee.