Henry Burkhardt III (1945–2000) was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, grew up in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and was schooled there. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and attended Princeton University. He began his career as a programmer at Digital Equipment Corporation. In 1968 he was one of the founders of Data General Corporation where he designed their first minicomputer, the Nova. He also founded Encore Computer and, later, Kendall Square Research Corporation. He held eight patents in the fields of high-performance computing and parallel processing.
Burkhardt died in August 2000 of pancreatic cancer. He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.