Sol Katz (August 3, 1947 – April 23, 1999) was an American software developer who pioneered

geospatial Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also ca ...

computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

(a sub-category of

GIS A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing geographic data (that is, descriptions of phenomena for which location is relevant), combined with software tools for managing, analyzing, and visualizing those data. In a ...

) and left behind a large body of work in the form of computer applications and format specifications while at the

U.S. Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. Headquartered in Washington DC, and with oversight over , it governs one eighth of the country's la ...

. This early archive provided both

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comment (computer programming), comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a Computer program, p ...

and applications freely available to the community, including the Windows application PC-MOSS, where MOSS (Map Overlay and Statistical System) is the earliest known Open Source Geographic Information System. Katz was also a frequent contributor to many geospatial

list server A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...

s. Katz was born in Sweden in 1947 and moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

at the age of 1. Yiddish was his first language, but he learned both

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...

. After high school, he spent three years in the

US Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...

, stationed in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

. Following his brief military career, he decided to go to Brooklyn College in New York where he got his bachelor's degree in

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...

in 2.5 years. He then married his wife Hedy in 1969, and went back to Brooklyn College while teaching in New York Public Schools and got his master's degree, also in geology. After several years working for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in several states, he settled down in

Lakewood, Colorado The City of Lakewood is the home rule municipality that is the most populous municipality in Jefferson County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 155,984 at the 2020 U.S. Census making Lakewood the fifth most populous city in C ...

and decided to go back to school at the

University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private research university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Univ ...

to study

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 (includin ...

and earned a second master's degree. At this time, he also had two children—Shanna and Risa. Katz died on April 23, 1999, from

non-Hodgkin lymphoma Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), also known as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, is a group of blood cancers that includes all types of lymphomas except Hodgkin lymphomas. Symptoms include enlarged lymph nodes, fever, night sweats, weight loss, and tire ...

GFOSS Award

The Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS) is given to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the GFOSS community. *2005 – Frank Warmerdam – Developer of the GDAL/OGR library *2006 –

Markus Neteler Markus Neteler is a software engineer and businessman. Biography He received his degree in physical geography and landscape ecology from Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, in 1999 where he worked as a researcher and teaching assistant for tw ...

–

GRASS GIS ''Geographic Resources Analysis Support System'' (commonly termed ''GRASS GIS'') is a geographic information system (GIS) software suite used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, producing graphics and maps, spatial and ...

developer since 1998 and founding-member of Open Source Geospatial Foundation (

OSGeo The Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is a non-profit non-governmental organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The foundation was formed in February 200 ...

) *2007 – Steve Lime – Leader of the

MapServer MapServer is an open-source development environment for building spatially enabled internet applications, built in the C language, and is widely known as one of the fastest Web mapping engines available. It can run as a CGI program or via MapSc ...

Project *2008 – Paul Ramsey – Leader of the

PostGIS PostGIS ( ) is an open source software program that adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. PostGIS follows the Simple Features for SQL specification from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Technica ...

project *2009 – Daniel Morissette – Co-leader of the

project and PSC of the GDAL/OGR library *2010 – Helena Mitášová – Contributor to GRASS, author, and promoter of FOSS4G in academia *2011 – Martin Davis – Developer of JTS, the Java Topology Suite *2012 – Venkatesh Raghavan – Founder of the FOSS4G community *2013 – Arnulf Christl – Co-founder of the OSGeo Foundation *2014 – Gary Sherman – Founder of the QGIS Project *2015 – Maria Brovelli – Advocate of FOSS4G and GeoForAll *2016 – Jeff McKenna – Longtime passion and leadership spreading FOSS4G and OSGeo around the world *2017 – Andrea Aime –

GeoServer In computing, GeoServer is an open-source server written in Java that allows users to share, process and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards. GeoServer ha ...

and

GeoTools GeoTools is a free software ( LGPL) GIS toolkit for developing standards compliant solutions. It provides an implementation of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications as they are developed. GeoTools is a contributor to the GeoAPI projec ...

core developer *2018 – Astrid Emde – leadership and longtime efforts for OSGeo and FOSSGIS communities *2019 – Even Rouault – dedication to so many projects including GDAL, PROJ, and many others *2020 – Anita Graser – QGIS advocate, developer, and leader, providing so much useful material to users *2021 – Malena Libman – Bringing so many communities and groups together, and empowering them, leaving a worldwide legacy *2022 – Sandro Santilli – Developer of PostGIS, GEOS, librtoppo, and longtime vision for being Open

References

External links

Sol Katz picture
* OSGeo page abou
Sol Katz Award for Geospatial Free and Open Source Software (GFOSS)
* Katz's collection of

utilities at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), available at ftp://ftp.blm.gov/pub/gis/ * Katz'
PC-MOSS source code
{{DEFAULTSORT:Katz, Sol 1947 births 1999 deaths American computer programmers People from Lakewood, Colorado Swedish emigrants to the United States Brooklyn College alumni University of Denver alumni United States Air Force airmen Bureau of Land Management personnel Deaths from non-Hodgkin lymphoma Deaths from cancer in Colorado