Andries Evert Brouwer (born 1951) is a Dutch mathematician and computer programmer, Professor Emeritus at

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology (), Abbreviation, abbr. TU/e, is a public university, public technical university in the Netherlands, situated in Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its Bachelor of Science, BS ...

(TU/e). He is known as the creator of the greatly expanded 1984 to 1985 versions of the

roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a style of role-playing game traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most ro ...

computer game ''

Hack Hack may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Games * Hack (Unix video game), ''Hack'' (Unix video game), a 1984 roguelike video game * .hack (video game series), ''.hack'' (video game series), a series of video games by the multimedia fran ...

'' that formed the basis for ''

NetHack ''NetHack'' is an open source single-player roguelike video game, first released in 1987 and maintained by the NetHack DevTeam. The game is a fork of the 1984 game ''Hack'', itself inspired by the 1980 game '' Rogue''. The player takes the role ...

''. He is also a

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...

. He is sometimes referred to by the handle ''aeb''.

Biography

Born in Amsterdam, Brouwer attended the gymnasium, and obtained his MSc in mathematics at the University of Amsterdam in 1971. In 1976 he received his Ph.D. in mathematics from

Vrije Universiteit The (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the othe ...

with a thesis entitled "Treelike Spaces and Related Topological Spaces", under the supervision of Maarten Maurice and Pieter Baayen, both of whom were in turn students of

Johannes de Groot Johannes de Groot (7 May 1914 – 11 September 1972) was a Dutch mathematician, the leading Dutch topology, topologist for more than two decades following World War II.. Biography De Groot was born at Garrelsweer, a village in the municipality ...

. In 2004 he received an honorary doctorate from

Aalborg University Aalborg University (AAU) is an international public university with campuses in Aalborg, Esbjerg, and Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1974, the university awards bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and PhD degrees in a wide variety of subje ...

. After graduation Brouwer started his academic career at the Mathematisch Centrum, later

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica The (abbr. CWI; English: "National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science") is a research centre in the field of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is part of the institutes organization of the Dutch Research Cou ...

. From 1986 to 2012 he was Professor at

(TU/e).

Work

Brouwer's varied research interests include several branches of

discrete mathematics Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that can be considered "discrete" (in a way analogous to discrete variables, having a bijection with the set of natural numbers) rather than "continuous" (analogously to continuous f ...

, particularly

graph theory In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of ''graph (discrete mathematics), graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of ''Vertex (graph ...

finite geometry A finite geometry is any geometry, geometric system that has only a finite set, finite number of point (geometry), points. The familiar Euclidean geometry is not finite, because a Euclidean line contains infinitely many points. A geometry based ...

and

coding theory Coding theory is the study of the properties of codes and their respective fitness for specific applications. Codes are used for data compression, cryptography, error detection and correction, data transmission and computer data storage, data sto ...

. He has published dozens of papers in graph theory and other areas of

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and as an end to obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many ...

, many of them in collaboration with other researchers. His co-authors include at least 9 of the co-authors of

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( ; 26March 191320September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, g ...

, giving him an

Erdős number The Erdős number () describes the "collaborative distance" between mathematician Paul Erdős and another person, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. The same principle has been applied in other fields where a particular individual ...

of 2.

Hack

In December 1984, while at the

(CWI), he made the first public release of ''Hack'' on

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

. ''Hack'' was an implementation of '' Rogue'' originally written in 1982 by Jay Fenlason and a few others, but Brouwer heavily modified and expanded it. He distributed a total of four versions of ''Hack'' between December 1984 and July 1985. The

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

was released as

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

, and it was widely copied, played, and ported to multiple computer platforms. When Mike Stephenson brought together a large development team via Usenet to produce an enhanced version in 1987 incorporating changes from many of the ''Hack'' derivatives, they respected Brouwer's wishes by renaming their game ''

'', as Brouwer might "...eventually release a new version of his own."

Linux kernel

Brouwer has also been involved with the development of

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

computer

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s based on the Linux kernel. He was previously the maintainer of the

man page A man page (short for manual page) is a form of software documentation found on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. Topics covered include programs, system libraries, system calls, and sometimes local system details. The local host administr ...

r program man and the maintainer of the Linux man-pages project (from 1995 to 2004), and he is a kernel maintainer in the areas of disk geometry and partition handling. Brouwer also serves as specialist in security aspects of Unix and Linux for EiPSI (Eindhoven Institute for the Protection of Systems and Information), TU/e's

information security Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data ...

research institute.

Selected publications

* *

References

External links

Brouwer's University home page
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brouwer, Andries 1951 births Living people Dutch computer programmers Dutch mathematicians Graph theorists Linux kernel programmers Video game programmers Academic staff of the Eindhoven University of Technology Computer security specialists Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam alumni Scientists from Amsterdam