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| Linus Torvalds |
| Linus Torvalds is the world's most famous computer programmer and also its most famous Finn. He is the founder and coordinator of Linux, the Unix-like operating system that is beginning to revolutionize the computer industry and possibly much else as well. His is truly one of the great tales in the history of the computers. Early Years Linus Benedict Torvalds was born on December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, the capital and largest city in Finland. He was named after Linus Pauling, the famous physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner. The Torvalds family belongs to the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, which numbers about 300,000 in a total population of roughly five million. Many members of the family were journalists. His parents, Nils and Anna Torvalds, were both radicals at the University of Helsinki during the 1960s. His father was a Communist who spent a year studying in Moscow in the mid-1970s and later became a radio journalist. His mother worked for a Finnish newspaper as a translator and a creator of news graphics. Also, his grandfather was the editor-in-chief of a Finnish newspaper, and his uncle worked for Finnish TV. Torvalds had a fairly conventional and happy childhood despite the fact that his parents were divorced when he was very young. He lived with his mother and also with his grandparents. Consistent with his family's occupation, emphasis was placed on reading from an early age. It was his maternal grandfather, Leo Toerngvist, a professor of statistics at the University of Helsinki, who had the greatest influence on the young Linus. In the mid-1970s, Toerngvist bought one of the first personal computers, a Commodore Vic 20. Torvalds soon became bored with the few programs that were available for it, and he thus began to create new ones, first using the BASIC programming language and then using the much more difficult but also more powerful assembly language. Programming and mathematics became Torvalds' passions. His father's efforts to interest him in sports, girls and other social activities were in vain, and Torvalds does not hesitate to admit that he had little talent for or interest in such pursuits. |
