Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Dr. Andrew Stuart "Andy" Tanenbaum (born 1944) is a professor of Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is best known as the author of Minix a free Unix-like operating system for teaching purposes, and for his computer science textbooks. He regards his teaching job as his most important work.[http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/followup/ 2004 article about Linux, the Usenet debate, and the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution

Biography

Tanenbaum was born in New York City and raised in White Plains, New York. He received his bachelor's degree in Physics from MIT in 1965. He received his doctorate in physics from UC Berkeley in 1971. He moved to the Netherlands to live with his (Dutch) wife, but he retains his United States citizenship. As of 2004 he teaches courses about Computer Organization and Operating Systems, and supervises the work of Ph.D. candidates.

He is well recognized for his textbooks on computer science, which are famous as standard texts in the field, particularly:

Computer Networks, ISBN 0130661023
Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, ISBN 0136386776
Modern Operating Systems, ISBN 0130313580

He also wrote:

Structured Computer Organization, ISBN 0131485210
Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms, ISBN 0130888931

Operating Systems: Design and Implementation and Minix were Linus Torvalds' inspiration for the Linux kernel. In his autobiography Just For Fun, Torvalds describes it as "the book that launched me to new heights". Tanenbaum started a famous, inflammatory Usenet discussion with Torvalds [http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/thread/c25870d7a41696d2/3f6b594a5b4eccb4 about the microkernel, but Linus and Andrew appear to be on good speaking terms; Linus wants it understood that he holds no animosity towards Tanenbaum. Tanenbaum went on to write the Amoeba distributed operating system, making full use of the microkernel idea.

In 2004 Tanenbaum created electoral-vote.com, a popular web site analyzing opinion polls for the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, using them to project the outcome in the Electoral College. The site also provided an electoral map. Surprising results on this map (such as, for example, a short period when Hawaii, traditionally Democratic, was listed as "Barely Bush") would often surface in popular discussion. Through most of the campaign period he kept his identity secret, referring to himself as "the Votemaster" and acknowledging only that he personally preferred Kerry. Tanenbaum, a Democrat, revealed his identity on November 1, 2004, the day prior to the election, also stating his reasons and qualifications for running the website ^*.

Awards

Fellow of the ACM
Fellow of the IEEE
Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Academy Professor
Coauthor of the Best Paper for High Impact at the 2006 IEEE Percom conference
Winner of the 2003 TAA McGuffey Award for classic textbooks
Winner of the 2002 TAA Texty Award for new textbooks
Winner of the 1997 ACM SIGCSE for contributions to computer science education
Winner of the 1994 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award
Coauthor of the 1984 ACM SOSP Distinguished Paper Award

Bibliography

Books written by Andrew S. Tanenbaum published by Prentice Hall
Academic publications by Andrew S. Tanenbaum from DBLP

References

External links and references

Professor Andrew S Tanenbaum at the Dept. of Computer Systems at VU
The Usenet discussion with Torvalds at Google Groups
- Linus vs. Tanenbaum at Usenet (all posts together)
Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate: Part II started again in May 2006

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Biography

Awards

Bibliography

References

External links and references