An example of a simple pseudo-random number generator is the multiply-with-carry method invented by George Marsaglia. It is computationally fast and has good (albeit not cryptographically strong) randomness properties:
He is also known for developing some of the most commonly used methods for generating random numbers and using them to produce random samples from various distributions. Some of the most widely used being the multiply-with-carry, subtract-with-borrow, Xorshift, KISS and Mother methods for random numbers, and the ziggurat algorithm for generating normally or other unimodally distributed random variables.