How much is Linus Torvalds worth?
| Net Worth: | $40 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Software Engineer |
| Date of Birth: | December 28, 1969 (age 53) |
| Country: | Finland |
| Height: | 5 ft 9 in (1.77 m) |
About Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds, whose full name is Linus Benedict Torvalds, is a Finnish-American author, blogger, businessman, computer scientist, software developer, and engineer. He is known for creating and designing Linux distributions and many other software. Over the course of his career, he has developed operating systems like Android and Chrome OS, written several best-selling books, and won numerous prizes and achievements for his contribution to the IT sector.
Linus Torvalds became famous after he created the eponymous operating system kernel in 1991 while he was still a student. He was born in Helsinki, Finland on 28 December 1969. He’s the son of Nils and Anna Torvalds and the grandson of Ole Torvalds (poet) and Leo Tornqvist (statistician). His parents worked as campus radicals at the University of Helsinki and that’s how they met. Linus was named after the Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling who was an American chemist.
After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Helsinki where he remained from 1988 to 1996. He received a master’s degree from the NODE research group in computer science. His academic career was interpreted after he was asked to join the Finnish Army Nyland Brigade. He was an officer for eleven months as part of Finland’s mandatory military service. During his time in the army, he was an artillery observer and gained the rank of second lieutenant. Long before that, he was already familiar with computers, machine codes, and assembly language.
The software developer and engineer became rich thanks to his own kernel. After he earned his higher education, he began his academic career. His interest in computers began in 1981 when he was eleven. He had a Commodore VIC20 and initially programmed in BASIC before moving to a 6502 CPU machine code. His first prototypes of Linux were released for the public in 1991, with version 1.0 being released in March 1994.
He first encountered the GNU Project in 1991 and after a visit to Transmeta, he became involved in the company 86open. He then began working at the Open Score Developmental Laboratories across various states. The laboratory was later merged with the Free Standard Group to create Linux Foundation. By the late 1990s, he was slowly becoming one of the top innovators in the world that’s under 35 years old. Ever since its first release, the operating system kernel has been not only one of the most popular but also one of the most used. It has brought great success to Linus who eventually became a millionaire by the beginning of the new millennium.
What makes Linus Torvalds so successful is his truly spectacular engineering works. Besides the Linux kernel, he has also developed important operating systems such as Android and Chrome OS. For his contribution, the businessman has received both media recognition and a lot of praise by critics all over the world. Time magazine has recognized him numerous times and has included him in their Time 100 and the most influential people in the world” lists over the 2000s and 2010s. He has also been presented with many awards and prizes, including the Millennium Technology Prize and the IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award, and Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronic Award.
Outside of his business and engineering ventures, Torvalds has also written multiple books. His first book is titled The Linux Story, which focuses on his one-of-a-kind invention. Just a few months after the book’s release (in 2000), he continued to rite more content. Over the next few years, he has written many other books, some of which became New York Times best-sellers – The Hacker Ethic and The Spirits of Information, as well as Just For Fun – The Accident and The Revolutionary Story.
Summing-Up
When it comes to software engineers and developers worth millions of dollars, Linus Torvalds is certainly one of them. The creator of the Linux kernel, Android, and Chrome operating systems was interested in computers when he was just eleven years old. Shortly after his time at the University of Helsinki, he began his academic career and quickly gained national coverage with his skills. In addition to fame, he also earned a net worth that we estimate to be more than $40 million over the past three or four centuries.
