Linus Torvalds, the principal force behind development of the Linux kernel and overseer of open source development for the Linux operating system, has been named the 2014 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society’s Computer Pioneer Award.
Linus is by far the youngest person to receive this highly esteemed award from the IEEE. None of the previous recipients were born before 1950 and generally well into old age or dead when they received it.
Linus also created git – a pretty widely used version control system, made most popular by Github.