Peter M. Schnell (born 10 June 1938 in Berlin)[1] is a German computer scientist, founder of Software AG and long-time chairman of the Vorstand, executive board.
Already as a student he gave courses in programming languages and worked as a freelance programmer for Euratom and at the German Computer Center in Darmstadt.
[1][3] In 1969, together with five other colleagues from the Institute for Applied Information Processing (AIV), Schnell founded Software AG in Darmstadt out of a garage with a starting capital of 6.000 German Mark and several patents.
Schnell was responsible for the maintenance and further development of Adabas for mainframe systems of IBM and Siemens AG.
He is an anthroposophist, and the foundation supports projects in the field of youth, elderly and disabled work as well as in science, research, education and nature conservation, including the University of Witten-Herdecke and the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences in Bonn.