Charles Geschke
Matthew Charles Geschke ( born September 8, 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American software developer and entrepreneur. He is with John E. Warnock co-founder of Adobe Systems (1982).
Geschke graduated from Xavier University with a bachelor's degree in classical languages in 1962 and the master's degree in mathematics in 1963 and in 1972 received his doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University in computer science. From 1963 to 1968 he was instructor of mathematics at John Carroll University. From 1972 he was in Palo Alto, where he was chief scientist at Xerox PARC research center. In 1978 he founded the Imaging Sciences Laboratory for computer science, image processing, computer graphics and optics, which he headed from 1980 to 1987. With his longtime research colleagues John Warnock, they developed there, the page description language Inter Press, which later PostScript was. Since they could not convince the management of Xerox to further develop the software, they founded in 1982 his own company: Adobe Systems. With the advent of the personal computer and laser printer in the early 1980s (especially from Apple with the LaserWriter 1985) they brought on the basis of PostScript, the first desktop publishing system on the market. From 1987 to 1994 he was CEO from 1989 to 2000 and President from Adobe, and from 1997 Head of the Supervisory Board.
He is a Fellow of the ACM ( 1999), the Mathematical Association of America and the National Academy of Engineering ( 1995). In 2010 he received the Marconi Prize and the 2008 Computer Entrepreneur Award from the IEEE Computer Society with Warnock. In 2009 he received the National Medal of Technology. He holds honorary doctorates from the John Carroll University. He became a Fellow of the Computer History Museum in 2002. In 1989 he was awarded with the ACM Software System Warnock other Award for the development of PostScript.
Geschke has been married since 1964 and has three children. On 26 May 1992, he was kidnapped in the parking lot by Adobe in Mountain View by two armed men and a few days later, on May 31, freed from the FBI after a suspect had been caught with ransom and had testified to the police. The two kidnappers were sentenced to life imprisonment.