John Carmack

American programmer who created the 3D graphics engines for Doom and Quake — arguably the most technically consequential video games ever made — and later served as CTO of Oculus VR before pursuing AGI research.

Invented the rendering techniques (binary space partitioning, texture mapping optimization, the Quake engine) that made real-time 3D graphics practical on consumer hardware, establishing the technical foundation of the modern game industry.