Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds
Torvalds in 2002
Born	Linus Benedict Torvalds (1969-12-28) December 28, 1969 (age 47) Helsinki, Finland
Residence	Dunthorpe, Oregon, United States
Nationality	Finnish, (naturalized as an American in 2010)
Alma mater	University of Helsinki (M.S.)
Occupation	Software engineer
Employer	Linux Foundation
Known for	Linux kernel, Linux, git, Subsurface
Spouse(s)	Tove Torvalds
Children	3
Parent(s)	Nils Torvalds (father) Anna Torvalds (mother)
Relatives	Leo Törnqvist (grandfather) Ole Torvalds (grandfather)

Linus Benedict Torvalds (/ˈlaɪnəsˈtɔːrvɔːldz/;Swedish: [ˈliːn.ɵs ˈtuːr.valds]; born December 28, 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and, for a long time, principal developer, of the Linux kernel; which became the kernel for operating systems such as the Linux operating system, Android, and Chrome OS. He also created the distributed revision control system Git and the diving logging and planning software Subsurface. He was honored, along with Shinya Yamanaka, with the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize by the Technology Academy Finland "in recognition of his creation of a new open source operating system for computers leading to the widely used Linux kernel". He is also the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award.

Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1969. He is the son of journalists Anna and Nils Torvalds, and the grandson of statistician Leo Törnqvist and of poet Ole Torvalds. Both of his parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s. His family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority. Torvalds was named after Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize–winning American chemist, although in the book Rebel Code Linux and the Open Source Revolution, Torvalds is quoted as saying, "I think I was named equally for Linus the Peanuts cartoon character", noting that this makes him half "Nobel Prize–winning chemist" and half "blanket-carrying cartoon character".