CHARLES SIMONYI, Chief Architect, Microsoft Corporation, joined Microsoft in 1981 to start the development of microcomputer application programs. He hired and managed teams who developed Microsoft Excel, Multiplan, Word, and other applications. In 1991, he moved on to Microsoft Research where he focused on Intentional Programming, an "ecology for abstractions" which strives for maximal reuse of components by separating high level intentions from implementation detail.

Before coming to Microsoft, Simonyi worked at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center developing Bravo, the first WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. Born in Budapest, Hungary, Simonyi holds a BS degree in engineering mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford.