Famous Canadian Engineers

Tech magnate Garrett Camp made headlines in 2020 when he quit his position of board director of Uber, a company co-founded by him, to focus on its product strategy. Camp has also formed companies such as StumbleUpon and the start-up incubator Expa Labs, and is part of The Giving Pledge.

Gerald Vincent Bull was a Canadian artillery expert, known for designing Project Babylon supergun for the Government of Iraq. His idea was to do away with the conventional rockets by firing satellites into orbit from a 156m-long barrel embedded inside a hill. However, his assassination within two years of the start of the project put an end to it.  

Grammy Award-winning Canadian sound engineer and music producer Robert Jens Rock, or Bob Rock, has not just worked with bands such as Metallica and Aerosmith, but has also composed for films such as Mission: Impossible II and St. Elmo's Fire. He is part of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

Distinguished Canadian politician, Marc Garneau, began his career as a naval officer and while in service became the first Canadian to travel to the outer space, eventually becoming the President of Canadian Space Agency. Elected to the Parliament as a member of the Liberal Party, he was named Minister of Transport in 2015 and Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2021.

Best known as the co-designer of the Go programming language, computer programmer Rob Pike has had an illustrious stint with the Bell Labs and now works with Google. He was also part of the Unix development team and has co-written books such as The Practice of Programming.

Peter Munk was a Hungarian-Canadian investor, businessman, and philanthropist. He is credited with founding numerous high-profile business ventures, such as Clairtone Sound Corporation Limited, Barrick Gold Corporation, and TrizecHahn Corporation. He also helped found the Peter and Melanie Munk Charitable Foundation which has given away over $300 million to various non-profit organizations that aim at improving the lives of Canadians.

Canadian game designer Patrice Désilets is best known for his Assassin's Creed game series. He also contributed to the creative direction of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Hype: The Time Quest. After leaving Ubisoft, he formed his own studio, the Montreal-based Panache Digital Games.

Robert Latimer is a Canadian farmer who was convicted of killing his daughter Tracy. Latimer argued that he killed Tracy as she was suffering from cerebral palsy that caused her immense pain. The case sparked controversy with many questioning the definition of euthanasia and the rights of differently-abled people. Latimer gained public support and was granted full parole in 2010.

A Syrian engineer who later moved to Canada, Maher Arar made headlines after being detained at the JFK International Airport, on his way to Montreal after a holiday in Tunisia. Suspected of being an Al Qaeda member, he was deported to Syria and tortured, before the government realized its mistake.

Andrew Coyne is a Canadian columnist who has worked with popular publications like Maclean's and National Post. He is currently working for The Globe and Mail. In 1994, Andrew Coyne was honored by the Public Policy Forum with the prestigious Hyman Solomon Award for Excellence in Public Policy Journalism.

Alfred Aho is a Canadian computer scientist. He is best known for his work on compilers, programming languages, and related algorithms. He is the author of several popular textbooks on the art and science of computer programming. Along with his long-time collaborator Jeffrey Ullman, he was awarded the 2020 Turing Award, one of the most prestigious awards in computer science. 

Born to a South African mother and a Dutch father in Pretoria, Theo de Raadt later moved to Canada with his family. The software engineer founded the OpenBSD and OpenSSH operating system networks and also contributed to NetBSD. He has also formed the Internet Exchange YYCIX in Calgary.

Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk made history when he became the first person to receive a degree from space when he was awarded an honorary degree while on a space mission. He also boasts of an MIT Sloan MBA. A mechanical engineer, he had initially also studied medicine.

Computational linguistics expert and New York Times bestselling Canadian author Ryan North is known for his award-winning books such as Romeo and/or Juliet and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. He is also the creator of the fixed-art webcomic Dinosaur Comics, which won the Web Cartoonists' Choice Award.

Bjarni Tryggvason is an engineer and former astronaut who played an important role in the Space Shuttle mission STS-85, where he served as a Payload Specialist. The mission, which was conducted in 1997, played a key role in studying the changes in the Earth's atmosphere. In 1997, Tryggvason was honored with the prestigious NASA Space Flight Medal. 

Initially an engineer in the US, Jim Bohlen had also worked with the US navy and defense departments, before moving to Canada due to his lack of faith in the American government’s nuclear policy. He later gained fame as one of the co-founders of Greenpeace and as a Green Party activist.

Lawrence A. Hyland was an American electrical engineer who made significant contributions that led to the invention of radar. He is best known for turning Hughes Aircraft, which was viewed by Howard Hughes as nothing more than a hobby shop, into one of the world’s best-known technology companies. Hyland also played an important role in the development of doppler radar.

Michael Calce or MafiaBoy is a Canadian computer hacker-turned-security expert. He achieved notoriety in 2000 when he launched a series of denial-of-service attacks against large commercial websites like Amazon.com, Yahoo, Dell, Inc., eBay, and CNN. The defenseless state of computer systems were realized after MafiaBoy's attack, which led to a significant increase in online security in the decade that followed.