Read more: http://www.technologyacademy.fi/blog/20 ... s-release/Linus Torvalds and Dr Shinya Yamanaka, are joint Grand Winners of the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize, one of the world’s major technology prizes. The President of the Republic of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, presented the prize today during the ceremony at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki in front of an audience of scientists and business leaders. This is the first time that the Grand Prize has been shared by two scientists. The 1.2m Euros prize fund will be split, with both winners receiving 600,000 Euros each.
Linus Torvalds, a Finnish-American citizen born in Finland, has been awarded the prize for creating the Linux kernel, a new open source operating system for computers. 73,000 man years have been spent fine-tuning the code. Today millions use computers, smartphones and digital video recorders that run on Linux. Linus Torvalds’s achievements have had a great impact on shared software development, networking and the openness of the web.
Linux in general may get some mainstream attention from this, already the BBC has reported on it: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18423502
Earlier today the BBC also published an interview with Linus: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18419231
