List of people known as the father or mother of something

The fathers of...

(alphabetically by surname)

• Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard - The father of Danish painting
• Steve Allen - The father of the television talk show
• Eric Allman - The father of modern Internet e-mail
• Peter Artedi - The father of ichthyology
• Philip Astley - The father of the modern circus
• Stephen F. Austin - The father of Texas
• Leo Baekeland - The father of plastic
• George Bancroft - The father of American History (also William Bradford)
• Alexander Graham Bell - The father of the telephone
• Edward Bernays - The father of public relations
• William Bradford - The father of American History (also George Bancroft)
• William Brown - The father of Argentinian Navy
• James Busby - The father of the Australian wine industry
• Nolan Bushnell - The father of the video arcade industry
• Santiago Ramón y Cajal - The father of Neuroscience
• John Calvin - The father of Protestantism
• John Cassavetes - The father of American independent film
• Vinton G. Cerf - The father of the Internet
• Anton Cermak - The father of Chicago's great Democratic machine
• Peter Cook - The father of British satire
• John Nelson Darby - The father of dispensationalism
• Sheikh Sayid Darwish - The father of Arab popular music
• William Morris Davis - The father of American geography
• Diophantus - The father of Algebra
• Lee De Forest - self-claimed "father of radio" (inventor of Audion amplifier tube, a key element).
• Allen B. Dumont - The father of modern TV
• John Boyd Dunlop - The father of the modern tire
• Quintus Ennius - The father of Roman poetry
• Brian Eno - The father of ambient music
• Robert Ettinger - The father of cryonics
• Luis A. Ferré - The father of the movement for Puerto Rican statehood
• Reginald Fessenden - The father of Radio Broadcasting
• Alexander Fleming - The father of penicillin
• Charles Fort - The father of Modern Paranormalism
• Gottlob Frege - The father of modern mamatical logic
• Sigmund Freud - The father of psychoanalysis
• Galileo Galilei - The father of modern astronomy, father of the scientific method
• Gandhi - father of the nation (India)
• Reimar Horten - the father of aircraft stealth technology
• Robert Goddard - The father of rocketry
• Josip Generalić - The fathr of naive art
• Gorgias - The father of systematic study of rhetoric
• James Gosling - The father of Java programming language
• Ben Graham - The father of Modern Security Analysis
• Thomas Graham - The father of colloid chemistry
• David Wark Griffith - The father of film grammar
• WC Handy - The father of the blues
• Ben Harney - The father of ragtime
• Joseph Haydn - The father of the modern orchestra
• Herodotus - The father of history
• Hippocrates - The father of medicine
• James Hutton - The father of modern geology
• Fredrick Jahn - The father of gymnastics
• Bill James - The father of Sabermetrics
• Thomas Jefferson - The father of archaeology
• Theodore Judah - The father of the First Transcontinental Railroad (U.S.)
• Mustafa Kemal - The father of modern Turkey
• Søren Kierkegaard - The father of existentialism
• Abraham Kuyper - The father of Dutch neo-calvinism
• Jack LaLanne - The godfather of fitness
• Sydney M. Lamb - The father of stratificational grammar
• Antoine Lavoisier - The father of modern chemistry
• Ivan Lupis - The father of torpedo
• Jacques-Donatien Le Ray - a French The father of the American Revolution
• John Lennard-Jones - The father of modern computational chemistry
• J.C.R. Licklider - The father of artificial intelligence
• Joseph Lister - The father of modern antisepsis
• Raymond Loewy - The father of industrial design
• Professor Longhair - The father of funk
• Niccolo Machiavelli - Alleged to be the father of lies
• James Madison - The father of the United States Constitution
• Herbert Marcuse - The father of the new left
• George Mason - The father of the Bill of Rights
• John McLoughlin - The father of Oregon (by vote of the Oregon legislature)
• Daniel Arap Moi - The father of Kenya's independence
• Claudio Monteverdi - The father of opera
• Gregor Mendel - The father of genetics
• Spike Milligan - The father of modern British comedy
• Billy Mitchell - The father of U.S. Air Force
• Andrija Mohorovičić - The father of seizmology
• Robert Moon - The father of the ZIP code
• Muddy Waters - The father of Chicago blues
• John von Neumann - The father of game theory
• Abu Nidal - literally translates to "The father of struggle"
• Sondre Norheim - The father of skiing
• Henry Parkes - The father of Federation (Australia)
• Fredrik Pacius - The father of Finnish music
• Charles Peirce - The father of modern semiotics
• Eduard Slavoljub Penkala - the father of a ink pen
• Jozef Pilsudski - the grandfather (of Poles)
• Camille Pissarro - The father of Impressionism
• Christopher Polhem - The father of Swedish engineering
• Pythagoras - The father of numbers
• S. R. Ranganathan - The father of library science in India.
• Hyman G. Rickover The father of the Nuclear Navy (U.S.)
• Louis Riel - The father of Manitoba
• Jimmie Rodgers - The father of country music
• Paul Sandby - The father of English watercolor painting
• Ferdinand de Saussure - The father of modern linguistics
• Moritz Schlick - The father of logical positivism
• Claude E. Shannon - The father of information theory
• Ivan Schwartz - The father of the airplane (Croatia)
• Ambrose Sevier - The father of Arkansas Statehood
• Adam Smith - The father of modern economics
• John C. Stennis - The father of America's Modern Navy
• Sun Yat-sen - The father of the nation of the Republic of China
• Edward Teller - The father of the hydrogen bomb
• Tertullian - The father of the Western Church
• Nikola Tesla - The father of radio, X-rays, AC current, remote control, radar, also the grandfather of SDI (space defence initiative)
• LaMarcus Adna Thompson - "Father of Gravity" or "Father of the Gravity Ride" (i.e. the rollercoaster)
• Franjo barun Trenk - The father of military music
• Charles Tupper - The father of Canadian Confederation
• Alan Turing - The father of computer science
• J. R. R. Tolkien - The father of the modern high fantasy genre
• Paolo Uccello - The father of the art of perspective
• Edgar Varèse - The father of electronic music
• Carl Vinson - The father of the two-ocean navy
• Faust Vrančić - The father of the parachute
• John Wanamaker - The father of the U.S. department store
• George Washington - The father of the United States
• Isaac Watts - The father of English Hymnody
• John B. Watson - The father of behaviorism
• Alfred Wegener - The father of plate tectonics
• Santa G. Wilfredo - father of The Protective Unconcious Theory
• Wright brothers - The fathers of aviation
• Rouzbeh Yassini - The father of the cable modem
• Eliezer Ben Yehuda - The father of modern Hebrew language

The mothers of...

• Jane Addams - The mother of Social Work
• Susan B. Anthony - The Mother of Us All (title of Virgil Thomson/Gertrude Stein opera)
• Isadora Duncan - The mother of modern dance
• Mary Harris Jones - Better known as Mother Jones. Also called "Grandmother of All Agitators".
• Winnie Madikizela-Mandela - The mother of the nation (of South Africa)
• The Blessed Virgin Mary - In Christianity, the mother of Jesus
• Lillian Moller Gilbreth - The mother of modern management
• Phoebe Palmer - the mother of the holiness movement
• Alice Waters - The mother of California cuisine