Linus Torvalds is the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel, the open-source operating system that powers billions of devices worldwide. He also created Git, the distributed version control system used by developers globally.

Torvalds studied computer science at the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1996, earning a master's degree with his thesis titled Linux: A Portable Operating System. He began programming at age 11 on his grandfather's Commodore VIC-20.

Torvalds received the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize and the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award. He was named one of Time magazine's most important people of the 20th century.

Torvalds worked at Transmeta from 1997 to 2003 before joining the Open Source Development Labs, which merged to become The Linux Foundation in 2007. The Linux Foundation sponsors his full-time work on the Linux kernel.

Linux powers over 96% of the world's top supercomputers, 90% of cloud infrastructure, and forms the basis of Android, which runs on over 70% of smartphones globally. Over 15,000 developers from 1,500+ companies have contributed to the Linux kernel.