James Gosling

He was born on May 19, 1955, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada; his mother, Joyce, taught high school home economics, and his father, Dave, handled logistics for geological expeditions in northern Canada. Because his family could not afford electronics parts, he built his first computing device from materials a phone company had discarded.⁠[1]

At 15 he was already writing software for the University of Calgary’s Department of Physics.⁠[2]

He earned a BSc in computer science from the University of Calgary in 1977 and a PhD in computer science from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1983 with the thesis “The Algebraic Manipulation of Constraints.”⁠[3]

His early work included the Pascal P-System; at CMUCarnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It grew out of the Carnegie Technical Schools, founded with funding from Andrew Carnegie in 1900, which were renamed the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912 and took the present name after merging with the Mellon Institute in 1967. The university is known for computer science, robotics, engineering, and the arts, and has campuses in Qatar, Silicon Valley, and Rwanda. As of September 2025, it enrolled 16,582 students. Its current president is Farnam Jahanian. On September 30, 2026, the university announced a $3 billion gift from Ken Griffin and plans to build a new campus in Miami.Open the full entry he developed the first UNIX EMACS and contributed to the X Window System through CMU’s wm window manager.⁠[4]

In 1984 he joined Sun Microsystems.⁠[5]

At Sun he was a vice president and Fellow, lead engineer of the NeWS window system, and later CTO of the Developer Products Group and the Client Software Group.⁠[3]

In 1991 he, Patrick Naughton and Mike Sheridan started work on Java, originally aiming at a language for small embedded systems such as set-top boxes.⁠[6]

On May 23, 1995, Sun’s John Gage and Netscape co-founder Marc AndreessenMarc AndreessenMarc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). While in college he helped develop the graphical web browser Mosaic, then co-founded Netscape and Loudcloud (later renamed Opsware), and has long served as a director of Meta; he has also published essays such as “Why Software Is Eating the World.”Open the full entry announced Java and its incorporation into the Netscape Navigator browser.⁠[6]

In 2002 USENIX gave him its Flame Award (lifetime achievement award) for his contributions to the UNIX and advanced systems communities, including the NeWS window system and the architecture and development of the Java language and operating environment.⁠[4]

On October 5, 2006, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada and was invested on October 26, 2007; the citation calls him the “father of Java programming language” and notes his leadership of Alberta’s Information and Communications Technology Research Advisory Council.⁠[2]

When the honour was announced in February 2007, he was a Sun vice president and Sun Fellow.⁠[7]

After Oracle’s takeover of Sun, he resigned on April 2, 2010, writing on his blog that an honest answer about why he left would do more harm than good.⁠[5]

He later cited a pay cut, reduced responsibilities and micromanagement, ending 26 years with the company.⁠[1]

In March 2011 he joined Google; that August he became chief software architect at Liquid Robotics, a start-up building unmanned ocean robots whose solar-powered, wave-propelled Wave Gliders collect ocean data far offshore.⁠[8]

In December 2013 he was named an ACMAustralian Community MediaAustralian Community Media (ACM) is an Australian regional and rural news publishing group with more than 100 brands, including The Canberra Times; in 2019 Nine sold it to a company controlled by interests associated with Antony Catalano and Thorney Investment Group.Open the full entry Fellow for his contributions to programming languages, tools and environments including Java, NeWS, Emacs and NetBeans; he was then working at the start-up Liquid Robotics.⁠[9]

In 2015, while chief software architect at Liquid Robotics, he received the IEEE John von Neumann Medal for his pioneering work on Java and other programming languages and environments.⁠[10]

He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering; Java was then used by approximately 9 million developers.⁠[11]

On May 22, 2017, he announced that he was joining Amazon Web Services, listing his title on LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry as distinguished engineer.⁠[12]

Liquid Robotics had been acquired by Boeing in December 2016.⁠[13]

On September 24, 2020, he appeared on episode 126 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing math and programming, coding style, Lisp, writing an Emacs implementation in C, the early internet, open source, Java, the Java virtual machine and Android.⁠[14]

In July 2024, at 69, he announced his retirement on social media, ending seven years at AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry.⁠[15]

Personal website: Public link: https://nighthacks.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[3]