Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Teaching

Books

Tanenbaum's textbooks on computer science include:

• Structured computer organization. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. 1976. ISBN 978-0-13-148521-1.
• Computer networks. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. 2019. ISBN 978-0-13-540800-1. (1981, with David J. Wetherall and Nickolas Feamster)
• Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, co-authored with Albert Woodhull
• Modern Operating Systems (1992, 2001, 2007, 2014, 2022)
• Distributed operating systems. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall. 1995. ISBN 978-0-13-219908-7.
• Distributed systems: principles and paradigms. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. 2007. ISBN 978-0-13-239227-3. (with Maarten van Steen)

One of Tanenbaum's most influential textbooks is Structured Computer Organization, first published in 1976. In the preface to the first edition, he famously began with the words: "Once upon a time computers were very simple." His book, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation and MINIX were Linus Torvalds' inspiration for the Linux kernel. In his autobiography Just for Fun, Torvalds describes it as "the book that launched me to new heights".

Doctoral students

Tanenbaum has had a number of PhD students who themselves have gone on to become widely known computer science researchers. These include:

• Henri Bal, professor at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam
• Frans Kaashoek, professor at MIT
• Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com

Dean of the Advanced School for Computing and Imaging

In the early 1990s, the Dutch government began setting up a number of thematically oriented research schools that spanned multiple universities. These schools were intended to bring professors and PhD students from different Dutch (and later, foreign) universities together to help them cooperate and enhance their research.

Tanenbaum was one of the cofounders and first Dean of the Advanced School for Computing and Imaging (ASCI). This school initially consisted of nearly 200 faculty members and PhD students from the Vrije Universiteit, University of Amsterdam, Delft University of Technology, and Leiden University. They were especially working on problems in advanced computer systems such as parallel computing and image analysis and processing.

Tanenbaum remained dean for 12 years, until 2005, when he was awarded an Academy Professorship by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, at which time he became a full-time research professor.

Projects

Amsterdam Compiler Kit

The Amsterdam Compiler Kit is a toolkit for producing portable compilers. It was started sometime before 1981 and Andrew Tanenbaum was the architect from the start until version 5.5.

Amoeba

Tanenbaum directed a group at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam doing research on distributed computer systems, which, in cooperation with the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, produced the distributed operating system Amoeba.

MINIX

In 1987, Tanenbaum wrote a clone of UNIX, called MINIX (MINi-unIX), for the IBM PC. It was targeted at students and others who wanted to learn how an operating system worked. Consequently, he wrote a book that listed the source code in an appendix and described it in detail in the text. The source code itself was available on a set of floppy disks. Within three months, a Usenet newsgroup, comp.os.minix, had sprung up with over 40,000 subscribers discussing and improving the system. One of these subscribers was Linus Torvalds, who began adding new features to MINIX and tailoring it to his own needs. On October 5, 1991, Torvalds announced his own (POSIX-like) kernel, called Linux, which originally used the MINIX file system but is not based on MINIX code.

Electoral-vote.com

In 2004, Tanenbaum created Electoral-vote.com, a web site analyzing opinion polls for the 2004 U.S. presidential election, using them to project the outcome in the Electoral College. He stated that he created the site as an American who "knows first hand what the world thinks of America and it is not a pretty picture at the moment. I want people to think of America as the land of freedom and democracy, not the land of arrogance and blind revenge. I want to be proud of America again." The site provided a color-coded map, updated each day with projections for each state's electoral votes. Through most of the campaign period Tanenbaum kept his identity secret, referring to himself as "the Votemaster" and acknowledging only that he personally preferred John Kerry. Mentioning that he supported the Democrats, he revealed his identity on November 1, 2004, the day before the election, and also stating his reasons and qualifications for running the website.

Through the site he also covered the 2006 midterm elections, correctly predicting the winner of all 33 Senate races that year.

For the 2008 elections, he got every state right except for Indiana, which he said McCain would win by 2% (Obama won by 1%) and Missouri, which he said was too close to call (McCain won by 0.1%). He correctly predicted all the winners in the Senate except for Minnesota, where he predicted a 1% win by Norm Coleman over Al Franken. After 7 months of legal battling and recounts, Franken won by 312 votes (0.01%).

In 2010, he correctly projected 35 out of 37 Senate races in the Midterm elections on the website. The exceptions were Colorado and Nevada.

Electoral-vote.com incorrectly predicted Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 United States presidential election. The website incorrectly predicted Clinton would win Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida. Electoral-vote.com did not predict a winner for Nevada, which Clinton would win. The website predicted the winners of the remaining 44 states and the District of Columbia correctly. Clinton however, won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote.

Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate

The Tanenbaum–Torvalds debate was a debate between Tanenbaum and Linus Torvalds regarding kernel design on Usenet in 1992.

Awards

• Fellow of the ACM
• Fellow of the IEEE for outstanding contributions to research and education in computer networks and operating systems.
• Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
• ACM Software System Award, 2023
• IEEE TCDP Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, 2022
• ACM EUROSYS Lifetime Achievement Award, 2015
• Winner of the TAA McGuffey award for classic textbooks for Modern Operating Systems, 3rd ed., 2010
• USENIX Flame Award for Lifetime Achievement, 2008
• NLUUG Lifetime Achievement Award, 2008
• Winner of the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal, 2007
• TAA Texty Award winner, 2003
• ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Educator of the Year Award, 1994

Honorary doctorates

• On May 12, 2008, Tanenbaum received an honorary doctorate from Universitatea Politehnica din București.
• On October 7, 2011, Universitatea Petru Maior din Târgu Mureș (Petru Maior University of Târgu Mureș) granted Tanenbaum the Doctor Honoris Causa (honorary doctorate) title for his work in the field of computer science and achievements in education.