Tom Truscott is a computer scientist

Computer scientist

A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....

 best known for creating Usenet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 with Jim Ellis

Jim Ellis (computing)

James Tice Ellis was a computer scientist best known as the co-creator of Usenet, along with Tom Truscott.Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Ellis grew up in Orlando, Florida. Before developing Usenet, Ellis attended Duke University. He later worked as an Internet security consultant for Sun...

, when both were graduate students at Duke University

Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...

. He is also a member of ACM

Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...

, IEEE, and Sigma Xi

Sigma Xi

Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Society is a non-profit honor society which was founded in 1886 at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a handful of graduate students. Members elect others on the basis of their research achievements or potential...

. One of his the first endeavors into computers were writing a computer chess program and then later working on a global optimizer for C at Bell Labs

Bell Labs

Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

. Today, Truscott works on tools that analyze software as a software developer for the SAS Institute

SAS Institute

SAS Institute Inc. , headquartered in Cary, North Carolina, USA, has been a major producer of software since it was founded in 1976 by Anthony Barr, James Goodnight, John Sall and Jane Helwig...

.

Truscott received the Usenix Life Time Achievement Award for Usenet.

External links

• The Evolution Of Usenet: The Poor Man's ARPANET Contains excerpts of Invitation to a General Access UNIX* Network, the original USENIX handout describing Usenet
• Interview with Tom Truscott
• Tom Truscott Biography Contains Full Biography of Tom Truscott