John Carmack

John Carmack is the lead programmer and co-founder of id Software, a high-profile video game development company. He is one of a few programmers who has become a celebrity, at least within the gaming community.

Carmack's skills enabled the development of the seminal first person shooter games Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, amongst others. Carmack's game "engines" have been able to take maximum advantage of the developments in PC hardware quicker than other developers. He has invented several computer graphic algorithmic techniques, notably surface caching and Carmack's Reverse.

He used some of the proceeds of his work to buy Ferraris. In 1997 he decided that four was too many and he gave one away as a prize in the Quake 1 "Red Annihilation" contest. He is also a rocketry enthusiast and the founder of Armadillo Aerospace.