The W. Wallace McDowell Award[1] is awarded by the IEEE Computer Society for outstanding theoretical, design, educational, practical, or related innovative contributions that fall within the scope of Computer Society interest.

This is the highest technical award made solely by the IEEE Computer Society where selection of the awardee is based on the "highest level of technical accomplishment and achievement".

This is popularly referred to as the "computer science's equivalent of the Nobel Prize".

[10] The first recipient, in 1966, was Fernando J. Corbató who was a prominent American computer scientist, notable as a pioneer in the development of time-sharing operating systems, then of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[1] John Backus was the developer of FORTRAN, for years one of the best known and most used programming systems in the world.