Linus Torvalds

Linus Benedict Torvalds pronunciation (help·info); born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer best known for initiating the development of the Linux kernel. He now acts as the project's coordinator.

Linus was inspired by Minix (an operating system developed by Andrew S. Tanenbaum) to develop a capable Unix-like operating system that could be run on a PC. Linux now also runs on many other architectures.

The complete, up-to-date and editable article about Linus Torvalds can be found at Wikipedia: Linus Torvalds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds