Linus Torvalds
The creator of Linux and Git
Linus Torvalds receiving 2018 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award from ICCE 2018 Conference Chair Saraju P. Mohanty and IEEE President James A. Jefferies at ICCE 2018 on 12 January 2018 in Las Vegas
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish-American software engineer who is the creator of the popluar Linux kernel and the inventor of the widely used Git revision control system.
Here's a time line of Linus Torvalds's life:
- 1969 Born on December 28th in Helsinki, Finland.
- 1981 Starts programming in BASIC on a Commodore VIC-20.
- 1988 Enrolls at the University of Helsinki.
- 1989 Joins the Finnish Army for the mandatory military service of Finland.
- 1990 Resumes university studies and was exposed to UNIX for the first time.
- 1991 Releases first public prototype of Linux.
- 1994 Releases Linux Version 1.0.
- 1996 The Spacewatch Project at the University of Arizona discovers asteroid 9793 and names it Torvalds in honor of the development of Linux and it's demonstration of the possibilities of the free exchange of information.
- 1996 Complets his master's degree with Laudatur grade at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki.
- 1997 Starts working at Transmeta Corporation, an American semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California.
- 1998 Receives the EFF Pioneer Award.
- 1999 Presented with stock options from Red Hat and VA Linux Systems in gratitude for creating the Linux kernal.
- 2003 Joins the non-profit organization Open Source Development Lab, which has since merged with the Free Standards Group to become the Linux Foundation.
- 2004 Moves his family to Dunthorpe, Oregon, to be closer to the OSDL's headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
- 2005 Disappears for a weekend and emerges the following week with Git, the leading distributed version control system.
- 2005 Releases the first public version of Git, Version 0.99.
- 2008 Inducted into the Hall of Fellows of the Computer History Museum "for the creation of the Linux kernel and the management of open source development of the widely used Linux operating system."
- 2010 Awarded the C&C Prize by the NEC Corporation for "contributions to the advancement of the information technology industry, education, research, and the improvement of our lives.
- 2012 Receives the Millennium Technology Prize, widely described as technology's equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
- 2012 Inducted, as one of 33 inaugural inductees, into ISOC's Internet Hall of Fame.
- 2014 Receives the IEEE Computer Society's Computer Pioneer Award.
"Nobody actually creates perfect code the first time around, except me. But there's only one of me."
-- Linus Torvalds
If you have time, you should read more about this AMAZING computer programmer on his Wikipedia entry.