Elon MuskEntrepreneur born in South Africa in 1971, behind Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI and X (formerly Twitter), and one of the richest people in the world.61 stories →Sam AltmanAmerican entrepreneur born in 1985, chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.27 stories →Mark ZuckerbergAmerican programmer and entrepreneur born in 1984, the creator of Facebook and head of Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp.22 stories →Mariana TodorovaFuturologist, associate professor at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and one of the best-known voices in Bulgaria on the future and artificial intelligence.18 stories →Yuval Noah HarariIsraeli historian born in 1976, author of Sapiens, Homo Deus and Nexus.14 stories →Bill GatesAmerican programmer and entrepreneur born in 1955, who co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen.12 stories →Ray KurzweilAmerican inventor and futurist born in 1948, the author of the idea of the technological singularity.12 stories →Jaron LanierAmerican computer scientist, musician and writer born in 1960, one of the pioneers of virtual reality.10 stories →Vitalik ButerinRussian-Canadian programmer born in 1994, the creator of Ethereum.10 stories →Yann LeCunFrench-American computer scientist born in 1960, one of the godfathers of artificial intelligence and a Turing Award winner.10 stories →Geoffrey HintonBritish-Canadian scientist born in 1947, the godfather of artificial intelligence and winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.9 stories →Jeff BezosAmerican entrepreneur born in 1964, founder of Amazon and of the space company Blue Origin.9 stories →Steve JobsAmerican entrepreneur (1955–2011) who co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak.9 stories →Svetlin NakovProgrammer, teacher and founder of SoftUni, whose courses tens of thousands of Bulgarians have taken.9 stories →Georgi GospodinovBulgarian writer and poet born in 1968, author of Natural Novel, The Physics of Sorrow and Time Shelter, which won the 2023 International Booker Prize.8 stories →Isaac AsimovAmerican writer and biochemist (1920–1992), one of the greats of science fiction and author of I, Robot and Foundation.8 stories →Martin VechevProfessor of computer science at ETH Zurich and founder of INSAIT, the world-class artificial intelligence institute in Sofia.8 stories →Pavlina VarbanovaPhilologist and creator of Kak se pishe?8 stories →Julita VasilevaProfessor of computer science at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, who researches persuasive technology.7 stories →Violeta KunevaPoet and lawyer.7 stories →Donald TrumpAmerican businessman and politician born in 1946, the 45th and 47th president of the United States.6 stories →Garry KasparovRussian chess player born in 1963, world champion and for many years the world's number one.6 stories →George OrwellBritish writer (1903–1950), author of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.6 stories →Hristo BotevBulgarian poet and revolutionary (1848–1876), one of the best-loved Bulgarian classics.6 stories →Joe RoganAmerican comedian, commentator and host of one of the most listened-to podcasts in the world.6 stories →Linus TorvaldsFinnish-American programmer born in Helsinki in 1969.6 stories →Preslav NakovProfessor and leading natural language processing expert at MBZUAI in Abu Dhabi, with work on fake-news detection and Bulgarian language models.6 stories →Alexander MoshevHistorian and popularizer of history.5 stories →Atanas AtanasovQuizzer who equalled the record of 18 consecutive wins on the TV quiz show The Last One Wins.5 stories →Boris HristovBulgarian poet born in 1945, one of the best-loved contemporary classics.5 stories →Hristo SmirnenskiBulgarian poet (1898–1923), author of A Fairy Tale of the Staircase and Winter Evenings.5 stories →Ivan VazovBulgarian writer (1850–1921), the patriarch of Bulgarian literature and author of Under the Yoke.5 stories →Lex FridmanAmerican researcher at MIT, born in the USSR in 1983, and host of one of the best-known podcasts on technology and artificial intelligence.5 stories →Nikola VaptsarovBulgarian poet (1909–1942), author of Motor Songs, who wrote about machines and faith in humankind.5 stories →Nikolay TellalovBulgarian science fiction writer.5 stories →Viktor BotevChief technology officer of the Norwegian-Bulgarian startup Iris.ai, which builds AI systems for analysing scientific papers.5 stories →Viktoria BeshliyskaWriter and philologist, author of the blog On the Trail of Words about old and dialect Bulgarian words, and of the novels Clay and Thread.5 stories →Alek PopovBulgarian writer (1966–2023), author of Mission London and The Palaveev Sisters.4 stories →Alexander KondovFront-end developer and author of the books Tao of React and Tao of Node.4 stories →Andrew NgBritish-American computer scientist born in 1976, co-founder of Google Brain and Coursera.4 stories →Antoine de Saint-ExupéryFrench writer and aviator (1900–1944), author of The Little Prince.4 stories →Dario AmodeiAmerican physicist and entrepreneur born in 1983, co-founder and chief executive of Anthropic, the company behind Claude.4 stories →Dimcho DebelyanovBulgarian poet (1887–1916), killed on the front in the First World War, author of To Return to Your Father's House.4 stories →Dimitar KaranikolovArchitect and photographer, author of the photo journal Stories from Planet Earth.4 stories →Edward SnowdenAmerican computer specialist born in 1983, a former CIA employee and contractor for the National Security Agency.4 stories →Elitsa Staneva-BrittonPsychologist and researcher.4 stories →Gary KildallAmerican computer scientist (1942–1994), creator of CP/M, the first popular operating system for personal computers.4 stories →Geo MilevBulgarian poet and journalist (1895–1925), author of the poem September and one of the boldest experimenters in Bulgarian literature.4 stories →Georgi GavrilovPoet and physicist, managing director of the Scribens publishing house.4 stories →Ilya SutskeverIsraeli-Canadian computer scientist born in the USSR in 1986, a student of Geoffrey Hinton and co-founder of OpenAI, where he was chief scientist for many years.4 stories →Jack DorseyAmerican entrepreneur born in 1976, co-founder of Twitter and of the payments company Square (now Block).4 stories →Lee SedolSouth Korean Go player born in 1983, for many years among the best in the world.4 stories →Matt MullenwegAmerican programmer and entrepreneur born in 1984, co-creator of WordPress and founder of Automattic.4 stories →Paul AllenAmerican programmer and entrepreneur (1953–2018), co-founder of Microsoft with Bill Gates.4 stories →Peter ThielGerman-American entrepreneur and investor born in 1967, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and the first outside investor in Facebook.4 stories →Peyo YavorovBulgarian poet (1878–1914), one of the greats of Bulgarian symbolism, author of Two Beautiful Eyes.4 stories →Radostin CholakovYoung programmer from the Rhodope village of Barutin, self-taught since the age of nine and winner of the BAIT youth award.4 stories →Rayko BaychevJournalist and Web Report award winner.4 stories →Stephen HawkingBritish physicist (1942–2018), author of A Brief History of Time, who studied black holes and the origin of the universe despite being paralysed by illness.4 stories →Val StoevaFounder of Detski knigi.com (Children's Books).4 stories →Veli PehlivanovCo-founder of Resolute Software and former engineering lead at Telerik and Progress.4 stories →Yordan DarakchievAstrophysicist and teacher who leads SoftUni's year-long machine learning module, the only one of its kind in Bulgaria.4 stories →Zachary KarabashlievBulgarian writer and playwright born in 1968, author of 18% Gray and Wound.4 stories →Ada LovelaceEnglish mathematician (1815–1852), the daughter of Lord Byron.3 stories →Albert EinsteinGerman-American physicist (1879–1955), creator of the theory of relativity and Nobel laureate.3 stories →Alexandrina GeorgievaFormer programmer and founder of the Offline Kids foundation.3 stories →Alexey PajitnovRussian-American programmer born in 1955 who created Tetris in 1984 at the Computing Centre of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow.3 stories →Andrej KarpathySlovak-Canadian computer scientist born in 1986, co-founder of OpenAI and former head of AI at Tesla.3 stories →Angel GeorgievCo-founder of the Sindeo academy.3 stories →Ani VladimirovaPsychologist.3 stories →Anton OrushLibrarian and collector, creator of the Sanducite (The Chests) archive, the most complete collection of Bulgarian computer and household technology.3 stories →Atanas DalchevBulgarian poet and translator (1904–1978), a master of quiet, object-centred verse.3 stories →Barack ObamaAmerican politician born in 1961, the 44th president of the United States.3 stories →Boris RusevHistory teacher at the 31st Ivan Vazov School and record holder with 34 consecutive wins on The Last One Wins.3 stories →Boyko LambovskiBulgarian poet and essayist born in 1960.3 stories →Byurhan KerimActor, director and writer, author of the novel The Lavender Boy.3 stories →Cal NewportAmerican computer scientist and author born in 1982, author of Deep Work and Digital Minimalism.3 stories →Christopher BuxtonBritish writer and translator who came to Burgas as a teacher in 1977, taught the poet Petya Dubarova and stayed in Bulgaria for good.3 stories →Claude ShannonAmerican mathematician and engineer (1916–2001), the father of information theory.3 stories →Daniela SimidchievaThe woman who achieved a record score of 192 on the Mensa intelligence test while unemployed and living with her three daughters in a 12-square-metre flat.3 stories →Dobri ZhotevBulgarian poet (1921–1997), largely forgotten today, author of the 1969 cycle Encounter with Kiberneta, in which he set human feeling against the dispassionate machine – one of the first poetic encounters with the computer in Bulgaria.3 stories →Donika BorimechkovaChild psychologist.3 stories →Elena PavlovaWriter and translator known as Virgil Dreamond, author of 25 gamebooks from the 1990s.3 stories →Eli PariserAmerican activist and author born in 1980, who coined the term filter bubble – the invisible world in which algorithms show us only what we already agree with.3 stories →Ernest HemingwayAmerican writer (1899–1961), author of The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Nobel laureate in literature.3 stories →Evgenia PeevaFounder of Teach For Bulgaria and director of the SoftUni Buditel high school.3 stories →Frances HaugenAmerican engineer born in 1984 and former Facebook employee.3 stories →Garo KeshishianPhotographer from Varna, one of the best-known names in Bulgarian photography, who has exhibited in Houston, Tokyo and Geneva.3 stories →Georgi BardarovWriter and geographer, lecturer at Sofia University and author of the novel Absolvo te.3 stories →Gordon BellAmerican computer engineer (1934–2024), creator of DEC's minicomputers and one of the pioneers of supercomputing.3 stories →Grigori PerelmanRussian mathematician born in 1966 who proved the Poincaré conjecture, one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems.3 stories →GrimesCanadian musician born in 1988, an artist who has experimented with artificial intelligence in music for years.3 stories →Isus KostovProgrammer who grew up in extreme poverty in the Roma neighbourhood of Lozenets in Stara Zagora and taught himself to code without paid courses or university.3 stories →Ivan LandzhevPoet and advertising professional.3 stories →Ivan PopovPhysicist, translator and futurist, author of the first Bulgarian cyberpunk novel, Hackers of Human Souls.3 stories →Ivan Vankov (Gatakka)Tech expert and podcaster known as Gatakka.3 stories →Julian AssangeAustralian journalist and activist born in 1971, founder of WikiLeaks.3 stories →Karel ČapekCzech writer (1890–1938), whose 1920 play R.U.R. introduced the word robot.3 stories →Krasimira HadzhiivanovaFounder of the Mayko Mila (Dear Mother) platform.3 stories →Kristiyan GrigorovBlind singer, teacher and blogger known as Kris Grigorov, who became famous as a child on Slavi's Show.3 stories →Larry PageAmerican computer scientist and entrepreneur born in 1973 who founded Google with Sergey Brin.3 stories →Maria ZhekovaMasterChef winner, photographer and Instagram creator who is restoring an old stone house in a Rhodope hamlet.3 stories →Minko GechevBulgarian programmer, senior engineer at Google and one of the developers of Angular.3 stories →Nayden TodorovConductor and head of the Sofia Philharmonic.3 stories →Nikolay GenovLiterary scholar at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and author of The Virtual Human: An Essay on Phantomatics, which revisits Stanisław Lem's ideas on virtual reality.3 stories →Nikolay TerziyskiBulgarian writer, author of Excommunication, Chronicles of the Unknown and Rodinia.3 stories →Orlin MilchevDirector, rapper and podcaster known as MC Atila.3 stories →Petar ChuhovBulgarian poet.3 stories →Ray BradburyAmerican writer (1920–2012), author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles.3 stories →Richard FeynmanAmerican physicist (1918–1988), Nobel laureate, one of the creators of quantum electrodynamics and a legendary teacher.3 stories →Salvador DalíSpanish painter (1904–1989), the best-known surrealist and author of The Persistence of Memory.3 stories →Steve WozniakAmerican engineer born in 1950 who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs.3 stories →Svetoslav StoychevLiterature teacher at the National High School of Mathematics and Science in Sofia.3 stories →Terry PratchettBritish writer (1948–2015), author of the Discworld series and one of the most-read fantasy authors in the world.3 stories →Tim Berners-LeeBritish computer scientist born in 1955, the inventor of the World Wide Web.3 stories →Valentin MihovBlockchain specialist.3 stories →Vasil LevskiBulgarian revolutionary (1837–1873), the Apostle of Freedom.3 stories →Vasil TerzievBulgarian entrepreneur born in 1979, co-founder of Telerik – one of the biggest success stories of Bulgarian software – and mayor of Sofia since 2023.3 stories →Vassilena ValchanovaMarketer.3 stories →William GibsonAmerican-Canadian writer born in 1948, the father of cyberpunk and author of Neuromancer.3 stories →Yevgeny ZamyatinRussian writer (1884–1937), author of We, one of the first dystopias, written before Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley's Brave New World and an inspiration for both.3 stories →Yordan Yordanov (Yuri)Photographer from Varna, a close friend of Garo Keshishian and one of the characters in Georgi Karamanev's novel And While the Rays Are Born.3 stories →