John L. Hennessy is one of the leading
computer scientsts of our time.
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, currently the President of Stanford University. This guy was one of those people that brought us MIPS, in both academic and industrial level by first initiating the MIPS project in 1981 and later cofounding MIPS Computer Systems in 1984-1985.
Hennessy lists Computer achitecture, VLSI, and Programming language design and implementation as his main research intrests, currently being the leader of the FLASH project.
For many students Hennessy is known as the author of Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface.