August Dvorak

Dr. August Dvorak (May 5, 1894 - October 10, 1975) was an educational psychologist and professor of education at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. He and his brother-in-law, Dr. William Dealey, are best known for creating the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout in the 1930s as a replacement for the QWERTY keyboard layout. In the 1940s, Dvorak designed keyboard layouts for people with the use of one hand.

Dr. Dvorak, along with Dealey, Nellie Merrick, and Gertrude Ford, wrote the book Typewriting Behavior, which was published in 1936. The book, which has been out of print since then, is an in-depth report on the psychology and physiology of typing.

Dr. Dvorak was distantly related to the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. It is worth noting that while the composer's name is pronounced /dvOrZAk/ (in SAMPA), August Dvorak's family in the U.S pronounces it as /dvOr{k/.