It's hard not to appreciate Paul Hudak, who's at the forefront of research in functional reactive programming. If you've heard of Yampa or Fran, they're children of his, as is Euterpea (which this book is centered on). He also wrote the Haskell School of Expression, an introductory text which touches on multimedia more generally.

IIRC he was diagnosed with a serious form of leukemia awhile back. It's good to see that he's still finding time to do cool things!