Linus Torvalds
Finland-Swedish programmer who created Linux in 1991 and Git in 2005. Two of the world's most-used pieces of software. BDFL of the Linux kernel since start.
Born in Helsinki in 1969, studied at University of Helsinki. Linux started as a hobby project on Minix. Git was created after the BitKeeper conflict in 2005 — took 10 days to write the first version. Famous for sharp responses on LKML, took a formal break in 2018 to work on communication style. The Linux Foundation pays his salary. Lives in Portland, Oregon since ~2004. More subtle: added Rust support to the kernel in 2022.