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Icons

No, not the kind of icons you plaster onto HTML pages, but the kind that have helped make this Internet what it is: remarkable people.

Vint Cerf

The man who co-designed the TCP/IP protocol suite.

The Creation of the UNIX* Operating System

A great history, sponsored by Lucent, to celebrate 30 years of UNIX in the industry. This lengthy narrative will also reveal some lesser known facts and trivia tidbits for the whole story. Stay a while, bookmark it, and read it all. The best link on the net right now bar none.

David Cutler

The man who helped bring the RSX, VMS, and NT ships into harbor. This is not his site, he doesn't have a site; this is the only 'fan' site going, but it's quite good. Check out Dave's red racing car!

Edsger Dijkstra

Edsger Dijkstra was truly one of the great minds of our time. He received his Bachelor of Arts (Candidaats Examen) degree in physics and mathematics in 1951 and his PhD in physics in 1956 from the University of Leyden, and was awarded a second PhD 1959 from the University of Amsterdam. However he had already decided in 1955 to pursue a career not in the traditional sciences, but in computer programming.

Dijkstra was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, was a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society, was a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received the ACM Turing Award in 1972.

Many computer scientists credit Dijkstra with bringing about the era of modular programming, through an article submitted to Niklas Wirth in 1964 in which he denigrated the use of the 'goto' statement. He was also known (and revered) for insisting all programs have one and only one entry/exit point.

Dijkstra was the author of 'T.H.E. Operating System' which he developed while at the Technical University of Eindhoven (thereof the name), and in which his invention of the 'semaphore' first appeared.

Dijkstra is also known for his 'Shortest Path First' algorithm (often referred to as 'Dijkstra's Algorithm') which is used in both the OSPF standard and the Cisco EIGRP protocol.

But Dijkstra was not only well-known; he was also loved, and was especially loved for his aphorisms ('teaching COBOL ought to be regarded as a criminal act') and his 'parables' about computer science, such as the Train Toilets parable which showed why computer projects fail, and the Spaghetti-Loving Philosophers parable, which illustrated the principles and the pitfalls of time-sharing systems.

Brian W. Kernighan

The gray eminence behind most of the ground breaking work at Bell Labs. Brian authored the seminal Software Tools series, authored the official tome on C, and with Rob Pike has published a number of standard texts on UNIX. Brian is supposedly the one who came up with the name - a pun on the OS they were working with previously.

Dennis M. Ritchie

The man who invented C, co-authored UNIX, and got a patent for the sticky bit. One of the truly great minds of our time. In April 1999 Dennis received the US National Medal of Technology for UNIX and C. Read about it here and here. Dennis' comment on the event: 'a lot of fun, even if we had to behave'. See Dennis shake Bill's hand here and here (240KB).

Ken Thompson

The man who co-authored UNIX with Dennis Ritchie, the father of the cryptic command. In April 1999 Ken received the US National Medal of Technology. Read about it here and here.

John ('Kelvin') Walker

Creator and founder of AutoDesk, one of the most original minds out there.

Jamie Zawinski

Jamie wrote the X front end to Mosaic Navigator. He stayed with MCOM while they changed their name, but he finally jumped ship when they sold out to Steve Case.

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