While there is a Nobel prize in other scientific fields, there really isn’t one for computing. Instead we have the A.M. Turing Award, the next best thing. According to Wikipedia, the award: is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field".

Past recipients have included legends such as EF Codd and Fred Brooks. This year the award went to Chuck Thacker, a technical fellow at Microsoft Research for his lifetime achievement and for his work in the early 1970s on the Alto, the first PC. (When he worked at the Xerox PARC.) More on Thacker and the award can be viewed here.