Finnish software engineer who in 1991, as a 21-year-old student at the University of Helsinki, released the first version of the Linux kernel as a personal project. His decision to license it under the GNU GPL turned it into the world's most widely deployed operating system kernel — powering Android smartphones, web servers, supercomputers, cloud infrastructure, and the International Space Station. Torvalds also created Git, the version-control system used by virtually all professional software development.
- Nationality: finnish
- Roles: software engineer, inventor
