Original designer of Java

Born: 19 May 1956 near Calgary, Alberta

James Gosling graduated from the University of Calgary in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science degree and received his PhD from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1983. The next year, he joined Sun Microsystems.

In the early 1990s, Gosling began to develop a universal programming language. Originally called Oak and designed for set-top boxes and handheld devices, the language was renamed to Java and modified for use on the web.

Gosling's many other designs include a multiprocessor for Unix, mail systems, window managers, satellite data acquisition systems, a WYSIWYG text editor, and a constraint based drawing editor. He also built the original Emacs text editor.

Additional trivia:

At age fourteen, Gosling would sneak into the University of Calgary to work on the computers.

The title of his thesis was "The Algebraic Manipulation of Constraints."

More information on:

Java

Sources include:

Conacher, Duff. More Canada Firsts. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1999.

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