Kiyono Takeshi was born on November 26, 1914 in Tokyo. He graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Kyoto Imperial University in March 1937. He joined the faculty in August as a Lecturer and then became an Associate Professor in November 1938. He received a Doctor's degree in Engineering in October 1946 and became a Professor in April 1947. From August 1957 to August 1958, he stayed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Visiting Research Fellow, Ministry of Education, where he studied applied geophysics and learned about the administration of the MIT Computing Center and programming education there. After he came back to Japan, he contributed to the establishment of the Data Processing Center of Kyoto University. Since then, he directed research development of scientific computation programs at the Data Processing Center and contributed to the improvement of software such as the KDC-I assembler and the ALGOL-60 compiler. In February 1966, he was appointed as a Science Officer, Higher Education and Science Bureau, Ministry of Education (while he remains as a Professor of Kyoto University). From October 1966 to December 1970, he attended conferences (twice a year) of International Counting Center (Rome) as a Japanese representative, and acted as a liaison between ICC and the Japan's government (Ministry of Education and Ministry of Foreign Affairs). During this period, he organized the ICC Tokyo Seminar, which was intended to enlighten countries in South-East Asia on information processing technology, supported by Information Processing Society of Japan and Ministry of International Trade and Industry.

After he returned to Kyoto University in December 1967, he contributed to the foundation of information department and to introduction of computers for education and research. As the result, Kyoto University, together with Yamanashi University, founded the first department of information engineering at National Universities. He contributed also to the design of fundamental principles of information processing education at universities, as a committee member of Conference on Education for Information Processing, Ministry of Education, from May 1969 to March 1974.

In May 1971, he was elected as IPSJ President and was the chairman of the Japan side at the First USA-Japan Computer Conference held in November 1972. In April 1974, he became the director of Kyoto University Data Processing Center and contributed to the progress of the Center. From June 1973 to May 1975, he was appointed as a School Inspector of Ministry of Education and collaborated to improve information processing education at technical junior colleges.

In October 1974, he received a prize from MITI for his contribution to informatization. He retired from Kyoto University in April 1978 and received a Professor Emeritus. He became an IPSJ Honorary Member in May 1980, received Orders of the Sacred Treasure in November 1987, and received IPSJ Contribution Award in May 1989.

He publication includes "Foundation for Programming" (Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, March 1971) and "Introduction to Information Engineering" (Asakura Publishing, August 1972) among others.