Alan Cooper

Alan Cooper (born June 3, 1952) is an American software designer and programmer. Widely recognized as the “Father of VisualBasic,"[1] Cooper is also known for his books About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design and The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. As founder of Cooper, a leading interaction design consultancy, he created the Goal-Directed design methodology and pioneered the use of personas as practical interaction design tools to create high-tech products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cooper

http://www.cooper.com/

history of Persona concept.