Peter Henry Salus is a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

, historian of technology, author in many fields, and an editor of books and journals. He has conducted research in germanistics,

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. In other words, it is how human beings gain the ability to be aware of language, to understand it, and to produce and use words and s ...

, and

computer language A computer language is a formal language used to communicate with a computer. Types of computer languages include: * Software construction#Construction languages, Construction language – all forms of communication by which a human can Comput ...

Education and career

Salus has a 1963 PhD in linguistics from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

. His dissertation was ''The Compound Noun in Indo-European: A Survey''. After serving as professor and dean at

University of North Florida The University of North Florida (UNF) is a public university, public research university in Jacksonville, Florida, United States. It is part of the State University System of Florida and is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern ...

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

University of Massachusetts The University of Massachusetts is the Public university, public university system of the Massachusetts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The university system includes six campuses (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, University of Massachusetts Lowell ...

where in 1967 he was involved in the founding of the Department of Linguistics, and

Queens College, City University of New York Queens College (QC) is a public college in the New York City borough of Queens. Part of the City University of New York system, Queens College occupies an campus primarily located in Flushing. Queens College was established in 1937 and offe ...

, he is now largely retired. He has also been executive director of both the

USENIX USENIX is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization based in Berkeley, California and founded in 1975 that supports advanced computing systems, operating system (OS), and computer networking research. It organizes several confe ...

Association and the Sun User Group, and Vice President of the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

. He was one of the organizers of the 1996 conference on Freely Redistributable Software in Cambridge. In addition, he has worked for several high tech startups. From 1987 to 1996, he was Managing Editor of the technical journal ''Computing Systems'' (

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

and the USENIX Association).

Contributions

In 1966, Salus worked with W. H. Auden on a translation of the ''

Poetic Edda The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems in alliterative verse. It is distinct from the closely related ''Prose Edda'', although both works are seminal to the study of Old Norse ...

''. During his work he discovered that the "Airman's Alphabet" in Auden's work was derived from the Eddic poems or more likely the translation by

Bruce Dickins Bruce Dickins, Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (26 October 1889 – 4 January 1978), a graduate of Magdalene College, Cambridge, was Professor of English Language at the University of Leeds from 1931 to 1946 (where he succeeded E. V. Gordon), te ...

. In December 1965 Salus attended a meeting of the Tolkien Society in New York. Auden and Salus' comments and intentions to write a book on

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson ...

were reported by ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'' and ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

''. However, Tolkien disapproved of a book on himself and was critical of Auden's reported remarks on his house and Salus' observations on the shape of

Middle-earth Middle-earth is the Setting (narrative), setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the ''Midgard, Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf'' ...

. He is best known for his books on the history of computing, particularly ''A Quarter Century of UNIX'' and ''Casting The Net'' (a history of the Internet up to 1995).

Partial bibliography

*''Völuspá : The Song of the Sybil'' (translated by Paul B. Taylor and W. H. Auden, Icelandic text edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor, 1968) *''On Language: Plato to von Humboldt'' (Holt, Reinholt, and Winston, Inc., 1969) *''Linguistics'' (Bobbs-Merrill, 1969) *''Pāṇini to Postal: A Bibliography in the History of Linguistics'' (Linguistic Research, 1971) *''For W. H. Auden, 21 February 1972'' (ed. Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor, 1972) *''Language and the Language Arts'' (with James Flood, Prentice-Hall, 1984) *''A Quarter Century of UNIX'' (Addison Wesley, 1 June 1994; ) *''Casting the Net'' (Addison-Wesley, March 1995; ) *''Handbook of Programming Languages'' (ed.; Indianapolis, IN: Macmillan Technical Pub., 1998, ; four volumes: , , , )Review of ''Handbook of Programming Languages'': * *''Big Book of IPv6 Addressing RFCs'' (Morgan Kaufmann, 2000; ) *''The Complete April Fools' Day RFCs'' (Peer-to-Peer Communications LLC, 2007; ) *''The Daemon, the Gnu & the Penguin'' (Reed Media Services, Sept. 2008; ) – previousl
serialised
on the

Groklaw ''Groklaw'' was a website that covered legal news of interest to the free and open source software community. Started as a law blog on May 16, 2003, by paralegal Pamela Jones ("PJ"), it covered issues such as the SCO-Linux lawsuits, the EU an ...

website *''The ARPANET Sourcebook: The Unpublished Foundations of the Internet'' (Peer-to-Peer Communications LLC, 2008; )

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Salus, Peter H. American computer scientists Programming language researchers Computer systems researchers Linguists from Austria American technology writers GNU people Unix people Solaris people Living people Historians of technology 1938 births