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James A. Gosling, O.C.
Order of Canada

The Order of Canada is Canada's highest civilian order and is the centrepiece of the Orders, decorations, and medals of Canada. Membership in the order is accorded to those who exemplify the order's Latin motto, taken from Epistle to the Hebrews 11:16, desiderantes meliorem patriam, meaning "They desire a better country."...
, Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", is an postgraduate academic degree awarded by University....
 (born May 19, 1955 near Calgary, Alberta
Alberta

Alberta is one of Canada Canadian Prairies Provinces and territories of Canada. It became a province on September 1, 1905.Alberta is located in western Canada, bounded by the provinces of British Columbia to the west and Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the U.S....
, Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
) is a famous software developer
Software developer

A software developer is a person or organization concerned with facets of the software development process wider than design and coding, a somewhat broader scope of computer programming or a specialty of project manager including some aspects of Software product management....
, best known as the father of the Java programming language
Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java ....
.

977, James Gosling received a B.Sc
Bachelor of Science

A Bachelor of Science is an bachelor's degree academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years ....
 in Computer Science from the University of Calgary
University of Calgary

The University of Calgary is a research-intensive public university in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The University is composed of 24,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students....
. In 1983, he earned a Ph.D
Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", is an postgraduate academic degree awarded by University....
 in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a top private university research university in Pittsburgh. Since its inception, Carnegie Mellon has grown into a world-renowned institution, with numerous programs that are frequently college and university rankings among the best in the world....
, and his doctoral thesis was titled "The Algebraic Manipulation of Constraints". While working towards his doctorate, he wrote a version of emacs
Emacs

Emacs is a class of feature-rich text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. Emacs has, perhaps, more editing commands than any other editor or word processor, numbering over 1,000....
 (gosmacs
Gosling Emacs

Gosling Emacs was an Emacs implementation written in 1981 by James Gosling in C . It was the first Emacs to run under Unix. Its extension language, Mocklisp, has a syntax that appears similar to Lisp programming language, but Mocklisp has no lists or other structured datatypes....
), and before joining Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982....
 he built a multi-processor version of Unix while at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a top private university research university in Pittsburgh. Since its inception, Carnegie Mellon has grown into a world-renowned institution, with numerous programs that are frequently college and university rankings among the best in the world....
, as well as several compiler
Compiler

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language . The most common reason for wanting to transform source code is to create an executable program....
s and mail systems
Mail transfer agent

A mail transfer agent The term mail server is also used to mean a computer acting as an MTA that is running the appropriate software. The term mail exchanger , in the context of the Domain Name System formally refers to an IP address assigned to a device hosting a mail server, and by extension also indicates the server itsel...
.

Since 1984, Gosling has been with Sun Microsystems, and is generally known best as the father of the Java programming language.

s generally credited as the inventor
Inventor

An inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find....
 of the Java programming language in 1991.






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James A. Gosling, O.C.
Order of Canada

The Order of Canada is Canada's highest civilian order and is the centrepiece of the Orders, decorations, and medals of Canada. Membership in the order is accorded to those who exemplify the order's Latin motto, taken from Epistle to the Hebrews 11:16, desiderantes meliorem patriam, meaning "They desire a better country."...
, Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", is an postgraduate academic degree awarded by University....
 (born May 19, 1955 near Calgary, Alberta
Alberta

Alberta is one of Canada Canadian Prairies Provinces and territories of Canada. It became a province on September 1, 1905.Alberta is located in western Canada, bounded by the provinces of British Columbia to the west and Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the U.S....
, Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
) is a famous software developer
Software developer

A software developer is a person or organization concerned with facets of the software development process wider than design and coding, a somewhat broader scope of computer programming or a specialty of project manager including some aspects of Software product management....
, best known as the father of the Java programming language
Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java ....
.

Education and career

In 1977, James Gosling received a B.Sc
Bachelor of Science

A Bachelor of Science is an bachelor's degree academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years ....
 in Computer Science from the University of Calgary
University of Calgary

The University of Calgary is a research-intensive public university in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The University is composed of 24,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students....
. In 1983, he earned a Ph.D
Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", is an postgraduate academic degree awarded by University....
 in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a top private university research university in Pittsburgh. Since its inception, Carnegie Mellon has grown into a world-renowned institution, with numerous programs that are frequently college and university rankings among the best in the world....
, and his doctoral thesis was titled "The Algebraic Manipulation of Constraints". While working towards his doctorate, he wrote a version of emacs
Emacs

Emacs is a class of feature-rich text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. Emacs has, perhaps, more editing commands than any other editor or word processor, numbering over 1,000....
 (gosmacs
Gosling Emacs

Gosling Emacs was an Emacs implementation written in 1981 by James Gosling in C . It was the first Emacs to run under Unix. Its extension language, Mocklisp, has a syntax that appears similar to Lisp programming language, but Mocklisp has no lists or other structured datatypes....
), and before joining Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982....
 he built a multi-processor version of Unix while at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a top private university research university in Pittsburgh. Since its inception, Carnegie Mellon has grown into a world-renowned institution, with numerous programs that are frequently college and university rankings among the best in the world....
, as well as several compiler
Compiler

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language . The most common reason for wanting to transform source code is to create an executable program....
s and mail systems
Mail transfer agent

A mail transfer agent The term mail server is also used to mean a computer acting as an MTA that is running the appropriate software. The term mail exchanger , in the context of the Domain Name System formally refers to an IP address assigned to a device hosting a mail server, and by extension also indicates the server itsel...
.

Since 1984, Gosling has been with Sun Microsystems, and is generally known best as the father of the Java programming language.

Contributions

He is generally credited as the inventor
Inventor

An inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find....
 of the Java programming language in 1991. He did the original design of Java and implemented its original compiler and virtual machine
Virtual machine

In computer science, a virtual machine is a software implementation of a machine that executes programs like a real machine.Definitions...
. For this achievement he was elected to the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 National Academy of Engineering
National Academy of Engineering

The United States National Academy of Engineering is a private, non-profit institution which was founded in 1964, under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the United States National Academy of Sciences, signed by Abraham Lincoln, in 1863....
. He has also made major contributions to several other software
Computer software

Computer software, or just software is a general term used to describe a collection of computer programs, Algorithm and Software documentation that perform some tasks on a computer system....
 systems, such as NeWS
NeWS

NeWS was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid 1980s. Originally known as "SunDew", its primary authors were James Gosling and David S....
 and Gosling Emacs
Gosling Emacs

Gosling Emacs was an Emacs implementation written in 1981 by James Gosling in C . It was the first Emacs to run under Unix. Its extension language, Mocklisp, has a syntax that appears similar to Lisp programming language, but Mocklisp has no lists or other structured datatypes....
. He also cowrote the "bundle" program, a utility thoroughly detailed in Brian Kernighan
Brian Kernighan

Brian Wilson Kernighan , is a computer scientist who worked at Bell Labs alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie and contributed greatly to Unix and its school of thought....
 and Rob Pike
Rob Pike

Robert C. Pike is a software engineer and author. He is best known for his work at Bell Labs, where he was a member of the Unix team and was involved in the creation of the Plan 9 from Bell Labs and Inferno operating systems, as well as the Limbo programming language....
's book The Unix Programming Environment
The Unix Programming Environment

The Unix Programming Environment is a textbook written by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike, both of Bell Labs. It is considered an important and early book on the Unix operating system....
.

Honors

In 2007, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada
Order of Canada

The Order of Canada is Canada's highest civilian order and is the centrepiece of the Orders, decorations, and medals of Canada. Membership in the order is accorded to those who exemplify the order's Latin motto, taken from Epistle to the Hebrews 11:16, desiderantes meliorem patriam, meaning "They desire a better country."...
. The Order is Canada's highest civilian honour. Officers are the second highest grade.

Trivia

In October 2006 he shaved for the first time in decades (in preparation for sleep apnea
Sleep apnea

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder characterized by pauses in breathing during sleep. Each episode, called an apnea , lasts long enough so that one or more breaths are missed, and such episodes occur repeatedly throughout sleep....
 surgery). According to him, neither his wife nor his children had ever seen him before without a beard.

Books

  • Ken Arnold
    Ken Arnold

    Kenneth Cutts Richard Cabot Arnold is a computer programmer well known as one of the developers of the 1980s dungeon crawl computer game Rogue , for his contributions to the original Berkeley distribution of Unix, for his books and articles about C and C++ , and his high-profile work on the Java platform....
    , James Gosling, David Holmes, The Java Programming Language, Fourth Edition, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2005, ISBN 0-321-34980-6
  • James Gosling, Bill Joy
    Bill Joy

    William Nelson Joy , commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy, Andy Bechtolsheim and Vaughan Ronald Pratt, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003....
    , Guy L. Steele Jr.
    Guy L. Steele, Jr.

    Guy Lewis Steele Jr., , also known as "The Great Quux" and GLS , is an American computer scientist who has played an important role in designing and documenting several computer programming languages....
    , Gilad Bracha, The Java Language Specification, Third Edition, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2005, ISBN 0-321-24678-0
  • Ken Arnold, James Gosling, David Holmes, The Java Programming Language, Third Edition, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2000, ISBN 0-201-70433-1
  • James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy L. Steele Jr., Gilad Bracha, The Java Language Specification, Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 2000, ISBN 0-201-31008-2
  • Gregory Bollella (Editor), Benjamin Brosgol, James Gosling, Peter Dibble, Steve Furr, David Hardin, Mark Turnbull, The Real-Time Specification for Java, Addison Wesley Longman, 2000, ISBN 0-201-70323-8
  • Ken Arnold, James Gosling, The Java programming language Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0-201-31006-6
  • Ken Arnold, James Gosling, The Java programming language, Addison-Wesley, 1996, ISBN 0-201-63455-4
  • James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy L. Steele Jr., The Java Language Specification, Addison Wesley Publishing Company, 1996, ISBN 0-201-63451-1
  • James Gosling, Frank Yellin, The Java Team, The Java Application Programming Interface, Volume 2: Window Toolkit and Applets, Addison-Wesley, 1996, ISBN 0-201-63459-7
  • James Gosling, Frank Yellin, The Java Team, The Java Application Programming Interface, Volume 1: Core Packages, Addison-Wesley, 1996, ISBN 0-201-63453-8
  • James Gosling, Henry McGilton, , Sun Microsystems
    Sun Microsystems

    Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982....
    , 1996
  • James Gosling, David S. H. Rosenthal
    David S. H. Rosenthal

    Dr. David S. H. Rosenthal is a computer scientist and chief scientist for the LOCKSS project. He is known for his early work in developing the X Window System, including the ICCCM....
    , Michelle J. Arden, The NeWS Book : An Introduction to the Network/Extensible Window System (Sun Technical Reference Library), Springer, 1989, ISBN 0-387-96915-2


External links