2012 Millennium Technology Prize

Linus Torvalds

The Technology Academy of Finland has awarded its 2012 Millennium Technology Prize to co-laureates Linus Torvalds of Oregon and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan. Many consider the Millennium Technology Prize to be on a par with the Nobel prize, but focusing on the development of new technology. Torvalds won a share of this year's prize in recognition of his development of the Linux kernel, the core of the open source software movement. Dr. Yamanaka was awarded the prize for his discoveries in stem cell development.

Quoting from the Finish Academy's announcement regarding Torvald's accomplishment:

One of the most important elements of the system, which he still writes code for from his Oregon home, as far as its creator is concerned, is that it should be open source software, publicly licensed for anyone to use. “I think open source is so important, it is basically taking the scientific approach of building on top of the openly published work of others, and applying it to software. And software is too important in the modern world not to be developed that way.”

Congratulations to both!

Shinya Yamanaka