Alex Martelli (born October 5, 1955) is an Italian computer engineer and Fellow of the

Python Software Foundation The Python Software Foundation (PSF) is an American nonprofit organization devoted to the Python programming language, launched on March 6, 2001. The mission of the foundation is to foster development of the Python community and is responsible for ...

. Since early 2005, he works for

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

, Inc. in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is t ...

, for the first few years as "Über Tech Lead," then as "Senior Staff Engineer," currently in charge of "long tail" community support for Google Cloud Platform. He holds a

Laurea In Italy, the ''laurea'' is the main post-secondary academic degree. The name originally referred literally to the laurel wreath, since ancient times a sign of honor and now worn by Italian students right after their official graduation ceremony ...

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from Bologna University (1980); he is the author of '' Python in a Nutshell'' (recently out in a third edition, which Martelli wrote with two co-authors), co-editor of the '' Python Cookbook''s first two editions, and has written other (mostly Python-related) materials. Martelli won the 2002 Activators' Choice Award, and the 2006 Frank Willison award for outstanding contributions to the Python community. Before joining Google, Martelli spent a year designing computer chips with

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globa ...

; eight years with

IBM Research IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research or ...

, gradually shifting from hardware to software, and winning three Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards; 12 as Senior Software Consultant at think3, Inc., developing libraries, network protocols, GUI engines, event frameworks, and web access frontends; and three more as a freelance consultant, working mostly for Open End AB, a Python-centered software house (formerly known as Strakt AB) located in

Gothenburg Gothenburg (; abbreviated Gbg; sv, Göteborg ) is the second-largest city in Sweden, fifth-largest in the Nordic countries, and capital of the Västra Götaland County. It is situated by the Kattegat, on the west coast of Sweden, and has ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

. He has taught courses on programming, development methods,

object-oriented design Object-oriented design (OOD) is the process of planning a Object-oriented programming, system of interacting objects for the purpose of solving a software problem. It is one approach to software design. Overview An Object (computer science), obje ...

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...

, and numerical computing, at

Ferrara University The University of Ferrara ( it, Università degli Studi di Ferrara) is the main university of the city of Ferrara in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. In the years prior to the First World War the University of Ferrara, with more than 5 ...

and other schools. Martelli was also the keynote speaker for the 2008

SciPy SciPy (pronounced "sigh pie") is a free and open-source Python library used for scientific computing and technical computing. SciPy contains modules for optimization, linear algebra, integration, interpolation, special functions, FFT, ...

Conference, and various editions of Pycon APAC and Pycon Italia conferences.

Bibliography

* *

References

* This article is based on autobiographical material at http://www.aleax.it/bio.txt, released as GFDL.

External resources

* Much of Martelli's writing can be found at hi
personal home page
*
Stack Overflow profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Martelli, Alex 1955 births Living people Google employees Computer programmers Italian computer scientists Engineers from Bologna Python (programming language) people Italian emigrants to the United States