I · The foundations
Leslie Lamport
1941–
Microsoft Research · ex-DEC SRC · 2013 Turing laureate
Gave us
Logical clocks. Byzantine generals. Paxos. TLA+. LaTeX (yes, that LaTeX).
The story
Wrote the foundational papers of distributed systems while also writing the typesetting macros every academic still uses. Calls Paxos "easy" — the field disagrees.
"A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable."
One more thing
Named Paxos after a fictional Greek island. The paper was rejected for being too unserious. He waited a decade and republished it.