James Gosling was born in Canada. He discovered computers at the age of 13, while hanging around the U. of Calgary, where he later received a BSc in Computer Science in 1977. He got his PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1983. An early project, begun 1984 after Gosling joined Sun, was a technical but not commercial success called NEWS (Network Extensible Windowing System), a PostScript-interpreter-based system of distributing computer-processing power across a network. Gosling began working on Java in 1991 as a secret project. The results were released in 1995, adding a new dimension to Internet capabilities. Java allows small programs, or applets, to be distributed over a network and safely used by client software on potentially any platform. James Gosling is a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. He wrote the first version of Emacs for UNIX, and is now leading the HotJava browser team. Other accomplishments include: building satellite data acquisition systems, a multiprocessor version of UNIX, several compilers, mail systems and window managers.
Sources: Globe and Mail, October 17, 1995; Sun Microsystems; Stanford Computer Science Dept.
© 1996 Softshell Small Systems Software Design Inc.
