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People known as the father or mother of something
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Often, discoveries and innovations are the work of multiple people, resulting from continual improvements over time. However, certain individuals are remembered for making significant contributions to the birth or development of a field or technology.[1] These individuals may often be described as the "father" or "mother" of a particular field or invention.
Fine art
| Subject | Father/mother | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Cowboy sculpture | Frederic Remington[2] | Created first bronze cowboy sculpture in 1895 |
| Japanese Manga (comics) and Anime (animation) | Osamu Tezuka | Creator of Manga (Japanese comics) and Anime (Japanese Animation) |
Games
| Subject | Father/mother | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Collectible card game | Richard Garfield | Creator of Magic: The Gathering |
| Miniature wargaming | H. G. Wells[3] | Publication of Little Wars |
| Modern video game | Ralph H. Baer Nolan Bushnell |
Magnavox Odyssey, Pong |
| Role-playing game | Gary Gygax[4] | Creator of Dungeons & Dragons |
| Stealth game | Hideo Kojima[5] | Creator of the Metal Gear stealth-action games |
| Video game | Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. | Inventor of the first video game[dubious – discuss] |
| Video game industry | Ralph H. Baer | Creator of the Magnavox Odyssey; inventor of the first home video game console |
| Wargaming | Charles S. Roberts[6] | Designer of Tactics |
Humanities
Military
| Subject | Father/mother | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Atomic bomb | Enrico Fermi[7] Robert Oppenheimer[8] Leó Szilárd[9] |
|
| Blitzkrieg | Heinz Guderian[10][11] | |
| Hydrogen bomb | Edward Teller[12] | Member of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s |
| Atomic submarine and "nuclear navy" | Hyman G. Rickover[13][14][15] | |
| Fourth Generation Warfare | William S. Lind[citation needed] | |
| The Soviet Union's Hydrogen Bomb | Andrei Sakharov[16] | |
| Tank | Ernest Swinton (British), Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne (French) | The need for armored and armed tracked vehicals to break the stalemate of trench warfare in WWI was noticed early on in the war by Winston Churchill and the British Landship Committee with Ernest Swinton working on British development and Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne credited for coming up with the French version[17][18][19] |
Nations
Natural and social sciences
Sports
| Subject | Father/mother | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| 1:8 radio-controlled off-road buggy | Yuichi Kanai (godfather)[20][21] | Kyosho's lead designer and lifelong employee; best known for the Inferno series of cars, credited for redefining the class from being unreliable and fragile to being tough and user friendlier that helped his employer to lead the 1/8 buggy renaissance from the 1990s, becoming one of the most dominant cars of all time. |
| American football | Walter Camp[22] | Established the snap, the line of scrimmage, eleven-player teams, and the concept of downs |
| American motocross | Edison Dye[23] | Introduced motorcross to American riders |
| American road racing | Cameron Argetsinger[24] | Introduced the first US auto race that was dedicated to road courses at Watkins Glen |
| American sports car | Fred Tone[25] | Fred Tone was the engineer who designed the first sports car known as the American Underslung |
| American soccer | Steve Ross (godfather)[26] | Created the New York Cosmos soccer team and imported a number of well known international footballers to the team in an attempt to bring interest to soccer in the US |
| Angling | Izaak Walton[27] | Author of The Compleat Angler |
| Argentine football | Alexander Watson Hutton[28] | |
| Argentine professional golf | José Jurado[29] | |
| Argentine winter sports | Otto Meiling[30] | |
| Association football | Ebenezer Cobb Morley[31] | |
| Australian rules football | Tom Wills | |
| H. C. A. Harrison | ||
| Baseball | Henry Chadwick[32][33][34][35] | |
| Taekwondo in India | Puran Andrew Gurung[36] | |
| Basketball | James Naismith | Created basketball |
| Black basketball | Edwin Henderson | Introduced the sport to the black community of Washington, D.C. in the first decade of the 20th century, and organized many early competitions for African Americans[37] |
| BMX | Scot Breithaupt[38] | |
| Brahma bull riding | Earl W. Bascom[39] | |
| Brazilian football | Charles William Miller[40] | |
| Camel Lights | Jim Downing | Built a racecar a season before it became the basis of a new lightweight prototype class in 1985[41] |
| Canadian rodeo | O. Raymond Knight[42] | Coined the rodeo term "stampede" and was world's first rodeo producer, rodeo stock contractor, and rodeo champion in 1902 |
| Modern chess | Wilhelm Steinitz | First official world chess champion |
| Drag racing | Wally Parks[43] | Founder of the NHRA and organized the first legitimate drag race |
| Don Garlits[44] | Innovator of drag racing safety | |
| Eddie Hill[45] | Regarded as the "Four Father" of drag racing for being the first to break the 5-second barrier. AKA "First in the Fours". | |
| Drifting | Kunimitsu Takahashi[46] | Introduced an aggressive high speed cornering technique that became widely used for illicit purposes, which eventually became a sport |
| East Coast skateboarding | Vinny Raffa (godfather)[47] | |
| Florida skateboarding | Bruce Walker (godfather)[48] | |
| Modern football | Ebenezer Cobb Morley[49] | |
| Freestyle BMX | Bob Haro[50][51] | |
| Freestyle Motocross | Mike Metzger (godfather)[52] | [why?] |
| Funny Car | Dick Landy[53] | |
| Modern gymnastic | Friedrich Ludwig Jahn | |
| Modern Handball | Karl Schelenz | |
| Ice hockey | James Creighton | Captained one of the two teams that participated in the first indoor hockey game on 3 March 1875 in Montreal |
| Import drag racing | Frank Choi[54] | Hosted one of the first events specifically for import cars in the mid-1990s to keep drivers out of street racing that progressed into a professional category |
| Italian football | James Richardson Spensley[55] | Associated with Genoa CFC; contributed to the modern day-variation of the game in Italy |
| William Garbutt[56] | Laid the foundations of skilled coaching in Italian football | |
| Japanese baseball | Horace Wilson[57] | Credited with introducing baseball in Japan |
| Hiroshi Hiraoka[58] | Credited with establishing the first baseball team | |
| Jogging | Jim Fixx[59] | Founding father[why?] |
| Kart racing | Art Ingels[60] | Developed the world's first kart (1956) |
| Kenyan running | Colm O'Connell[61] | Founded the first running camp in Kenya |
| Lacrosse | William George Beers[62][63][64][65] | Codified the sport from its original Indigenous American formation |
| Mexican taekwondo | Dai-won Moon[66] | Credited with introducing the sport to Mexico; founded school that has trained tens of thousands in the sport |
| Mississippi rodeo | Earl W. Bascom Weldon Bascom[67] |
Produced the first rodeo in Columbia, Mississippi in 1935 |
| Mixed martial arts | Edward William Barton-Wright[68] | Experimented 1898–1902 with Shinden Fudo Ryu jujutsu, Kodokan judo, British boxing, Swiss schwingen, French savate and a defensive la canne (stick fighting) style that had been developed by Pierre Vigny of Switzerland, which led to the invention of Bartitsu |
| Model aviation | Joseph S. Ott[69] | Chicago Tribune, in an obituary, referred him as the father mainly for his designs of thousands of model aircraft spanning from the 1920s up to his death in 1986. |
| Modern bodybuilding | Eugen Sandow[70] | |
| Harold Zinkin[71] | Called so by Arnold Schwarzenegger during a press statement on his passing in 2004; inventor of modern exercise machines | |
| Modern boxing | James Figg[72] James J.Corbett The Father of Modern American Scientific Boxing | |
| Modern figure skating | Jackson Haines[73] | "Jackson Haines — The Father of Figure Skating", according to Roy Blakey |
| Modern football in Japan | Dettmar Cramer[74] | |
| Modern rodeo | Earl W. Bascom[75] | Inventor of rodeo gear and equipment that made rodeo into a modern international sport |
| Modern tennis | Jack Kramer[76] | Creator of the "Open"-era tournaments and the Association of Tennis Professionals |
| Puroresu | Rikidōzan[77] | |
| Para-equestrian dressage | Lee Pearson (godfather)[78] | Most decorated para-equestrian rider of all time |
| Organized radio controlled racing | Ted Longshaw[79] | Regarded as a grandfather of the sport; founded an organization for racing in the United Kingdom (1971); founded governing bodies for organized racing in Europe (1973), the far east (1980) and worldwide (1979) |
| Roger Curtis | Co-founder of Associated Electrics, one of the most significant R/C car brands; contributed to racing[80] | |
| Modern sabre fencing | Italo Santelli[81] | |
| Modern surfing | Duke Kahanamoku[82] | |
| Rodeo bareback bronc riding | Earl W. Bascom[83][84] | Designed and made the first one-hand rigging in 1924 |
| Rugby union | A. G. Guillemard[85] | |
| William Webb Ellis[86] | "Who with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time first took the ball in his arms and ran with it thus originating the distinctive feature of the rugby game". | |
| Scuba diving | Jacques Cousteau[87] | Developed the aqua-lung jointly with Émile Gagnan; popularized scuba diving as a research diver, writer, and film and television producer and personality |
| Skateboarding | Skip Engblom (godfather)[88] | |
| Tony Hawk (godfather)[89] | ||
| Rodney Mullen (godfather) | ||
| Snooker | Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain[90] | Adopted the name and framed the rules in Ooty, India |
| Snowboarding | Jake Burton Carpenter[91] | |
| Stock car racing | Bill France Sr.[92][93] | Founded the sanctioning body for stock car racing |
| Supercross | Mike Goodwin[94] | Organized the first supercross race |
| Telemark skiing | Sondre Norheim[95] | |
| Televised golf | Frank Chirkinian[96][97] | Personally responsible for much of the production conventions of modern golf broadcasting |