Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and, historically, the lead developer of the Linux kernel, used by Linux distributions and other operating systems such as Android. He also created the

distributed version control In software development, distributed version control (also known as distributed revision control) is a form of version control in which the complete codebase, including its full history, is mirrored on every developer's computer. Compared to centr ...

system

Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data in ...

. He was honored, along with

Shinya Yamanaka is a Japanese stem cell researcher and a Nobel Prize laureate. He serves as the director of Center for iPS Cell (induced Pluripotent Stem Cell) Research and Application and a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyo ...

, with the 2012

Millennium Technology Prize The Millennium Technology Prize ( fi, Millennium-teknologiapalkinto) is one of the world's largest technology prizes. It is awarded once every two years by Technology Academy Finland, an independent foundation established by Finnish industries, ...

by the

Technology Academy Finland Technology Academy Finland (formerly Millennium Prize Foundation and Finnish Technology Award Foundation) is an independent foundation established in 2003 by Finnish industry and the Government of Finland in partnership. The foundation's objective ...

"in recognition of his creation of a new open source

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

for computers leading to the widely used Linux

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learn ...

." He is also the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award and the 2018 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award.

Life and career

Early years

Torvalds was born in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city ...

, Finland, the son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds, the grandson of statistician Leo Törnqvist and of poet Ole Torvalds, and the great-grandson of journalist and soldier

Toivo Karanko Toivo Tuomas Savolainen, later Karanko (20 September 1891 Nurmes - 15 May 1969 Helsinki) was a Finnish Jäger captain and a journalist.Suomen jääkärien elämäkerrasto 1938Suomen jääkärien elämäkerrasto 1975 Studies Savolainen enrolled as ...

. His parents were campus radicals at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

in the 1960s. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. He was named after Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize-winning American chemist, although in the book ''

Rebel Code ''Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution'' is a technology book by Glyn Moody published in 2001. It describes the evolution and significance of the free software and open source movements with many interviews with notable hackers. In a ...

: Linux and the Open Source Revolution'', he is quoted as saying, "I think I was named equally for Linus the

Peanuts ''Peanuts'' is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz. The strip's original run extended from 1950 to 2000, continuing in reruns afterward. ''Peanuts'' is among the most popular and infl ...

cartoon character", noting that this made him "half Nobel Prize-winning chemist and half blanket-carrying cartoon character". Torvalds attended the

from 1988 to 1996, graduating with a master's degree in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

from the NODES research group. His academic career was interrupted after his first year of study when he joined the

Finnish Navy The Finnish Navy ( fi, Merivoimat, sv, Marinen) is one of the branches of the Finnish Defence Forces. The navy employs 2,300 people and about 4,300 conscripts are trained each year. Finnish Navy vessels are given the ship prefix "FNS", short f ...

Nyland Brigade The Nyland Brigade, officially Nylands Brigad (NylBr) in Swedish, fi, Uudenmaan Prikaati (UudPr), is a brigade-level marine-type unit of the Finnish Navy stationed in Dragsvik in Raseborg in the province of Uusimaa. The Brigade trains Coastal ...

in the summer of 1989, selecting the 11-month officer training program to fulfill the mandatory military service of Finland. He gained the rank of second lieutenant, with the role of an

artillery observer An artillery observer, artillery spotter or forward observer (FO) is responsible for directing artillery and mortar fire onto a target. It may be a ''forward air controller'' (FAC) for close air support (CAS) and spotter for naval gunfire su ...

. He bought computer science professor

Andrew Tanenbaum Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum (born March 16, 1944), sometimes referred to by the handle ast, is an American-Dutch computer scientist and professor emeritus of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is the author ...

's book '' Operating Systems: Design and Implementation'', in which Tanenbaum describes MINIX, an educational stripped-down version of

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

. In 1990, Torvalds resumed his university studies, and was exposed to Unix for the first time in the form of a DEC

MicroVAX The MicroVAX is a discontinued family of low-cost minicomputers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The first model, the MicroVAX I, was introduced in 1983.(announced October 1983) They used processors that implemen ...

running ULTRIX. His MSc thesis was titled ''

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

: A Portable Operating System''. His interest in computers began with a

VIC-20 The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the ...

at the age of 11 in 1981. He started programming for it in BASIC, then later by directly accessing the

6502 The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small te ...

CPU in

machine code In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a ve ...

(he did not utilize assembly language). He then purchased a

Sinclair QL The Sinclair QL (for ''Quantum Leap'') is a personal computer launched by Sinclair Research in 1984, as an upper-end counterpart to the ZX Spectrum. The QL was aimed at the serious home user and professional and executive users markets from small ...

, which he modified extensively, especially its operating system. "Because it was so hard to get software for it in Finland", he wrote his own assembler and editor "(in addition to Pac-Man graphics libraries)" for the QL, and a few games. He wrote a '' Pac-Man'' clone, ''Cool Man''. On 5 January 1991 he purchased an

Intel 80386 The Intel 386, originally released as 80386 and later renamed i386, is a 32-bit microprocessor introduced in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistorsIBM PC before receiving his MINIX copy, which in turn enabled him to begin work on Linux.

Linux

The first Linux prototypes were publicly released in late 1991. Version 1.0 was released on 14 March 1994. Torvalds first encountered the

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborat ...

in 1991 when another Swedish-speaking computer science student, Lars Wirzenius, took him to the University of Technology to listen to free software guru

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

's speech.