William Richard (Rich) Stevens (February 5, 1951September 1, 1999) was a

Northern Rhodesia Northern Rhodesia was a British protectorate in south central Africa, now the independent country of Zambia. It was formed in 1911 by amalgamating the two earlier protectorates of Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesi ...

-born American author of

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 Applied science, practical discipli ...

books, in particular books on

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, ...

and

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the su ...

Biography

Richard Stevens was born in 1951 in Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia (now

Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most central point. Its neighbours are t ...

), where his father worked for the copper industry. The family later moved to

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...

Hurley, New Mexico Hurley is a town in Grant County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 1,297 at the 2010 census, down from 1,464 in 2000. Geography Hurley is located in east-central Grant County at (32.699594, -108.128629). U.S. Route 180 passes thro ...

, Washington, D.C. and Phalaborwa, South Africa. Stevens attended

Fishburne Military School Fishburne Military School (FMS) is a private, military boarding school for boys in Waynesboro, Virginia, United States. It was founded by James A. Fishburne in 1879 and is one of the oldest military schools in the country. History James A. F ...

in Waynesboro,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...

. He received a bachelor's degree in

Aerospace Engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1973 and both a master's degree (in 1978) and PhD (in 1982) in

Systems Engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinki ...

from the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first ...

. He moved to Tucson in 1975 where he was employed at

Kitt Peak National Observatory The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is a United States astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation, west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona. With more than ...

as a computer programmer until 1982. From 1982 until 1990 he was Vice President of Computing Services at Health Systems International in

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...

, Connecticut. Stevens moved back to Tucson in 1990 where he pursued his career as an author and consultant. He was also an avid pilot and a part-time flight instructor during the 1970s. Stevens died in 1999, at the age of 48. In 2000, he was posthumously awarded the Usenix Lifetime Achievement Award.

Books

* 1990 - ''

UNIX Network Programming Unix Network Programming is a book written by W. Richard Stevens. It was published in 1990 by Prentice Hall and covers many topics regarding UNIX networking and Computer network programming. The book focuses on the design and development of networ ...

'' - * 1992 - '' Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment'' - * 1994 - '' TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols'' - * 1995 - ''TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2: The Implementation'' (with Gary R. Wright) - * 1996 - ''TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 3: TCP for Transactions,

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...

NNTP The Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) is an application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles (''netnews'') between news servers, and for reading/posting articles by the end user client applications. Brian Kantor of the Univers ...

, and the UNIX Domain Protocols'' - * 1998 - ''UNIX Network Programming, Volume 1, Second Edition: Networking APIs:

Socket Socket may refer to: Mechanics * Socket wrench, a type of wrench that uses separate, removable sockets to fit different sizes of nuts and bolts * Socket head screw, a screw (or bolt) with a cylindrical head containing a socket into which the hexag ...

s and XTI'' - * 1999 - ''UNIX Network Programming, Volume 2, Second Edition:

Interprocess Communication In computer science, inter-process communication or interprocess communication (IPC) refers specifically to the mechanisms an operating system provides to allow the processes to manage shared data. Typically, applications can use IPC, categoriz ...

s'' - * 2003 - ''UNIX Network Programming Volume 1, Third Edition: The Sockets Networking API'' - (with Bill Fenner, and Andrew M. Rudoff) * 2005 - ''Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, Second Edition'' - (with Stephen A. Rago) * 2011 - ''TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols (2nd Edition)'' - (with Kevin R. Fall) * 2013 - ''Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, Third Edition'' - (with Stephen A. Rago)

RFCs

Stevens also co-authored several internet

Request for Comments A Request for Comments (RFC) is a publication in a series from the principal technical development and standards-setting bodies for the Internet, most prominently the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). An RFC is authored by individuals or g ...

(RFC) documents for the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements an ...

, the process by which the internet's "technical and organizational notes" are disseminated. Stevens' RFCs covered updates to the

Berkeley sockets Berkeley sockets is an application programming interface (API) for Internet sockets and Unix domain sockets, used for inter-process communication (IPC). It is commonly implemented as a library of linkable modules. It originated with the 4.2BS ...

API for

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. I ...

, as well as a standard method of congestion control for TCP sessions. * Stevens, W. R., and Thomas, M. 1998. "Advanced Sockets API for IPv6," RFC 2292 * Gilligan, R. E., Thomson, S., Bound, J., and Stevens, W. R. 1999. "Basic Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6," RFC 2553 * Allman, M., Paxson, V., Stevens, W. R. 1999. "TCP Congestion Control," RFC 2581

References

External links

Stevens' former homepage

''Guru of the Unix gurus''
by Rachel Chalmers (September 1, 2000) at Salon.com
Prentice Hall interview with Rich Stevens, author of Unix Programming, Volume 1: Networking APIs, Sockets and XTI, 2/e
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stevens, W. Richard 1951 births 1999 deaths Zambian people of British descent Zambian people of English descent Zambian emigrants to South Africa Zambian emigrants to the United States American technology writers People from Luanshya University of Michigan College of Engineering alumni Unix people Fishburne Military School alumni 20th-century American non-fiction writers