Andrew Stuart Tanenbaum (born March 16, 1944), sometimes referred to by the handle ast, is an American-Dutch computer scientist and professor emeritus of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is the author of MINIX, a free Unix-like operating system for teaching purposes, and has written multiple computer science textbooks regarded as standard texts in the field. He regards his teaching job as his most important work. Since 2004 he has operated Electoral-vote.com, a website dedicated to analysis of polling data in federal elections in the United States. Biography Tanenbaum was born in New York City and grew up in suburban White Plains, New York. He is Jewish. His paternal grandfather was born in Khorostkiv in the Austro-Hungarian empire. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in physics from MIT in 1965 and his PhD degree in astrophysics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. Tanenbaum also served as a lobbyist for the Sierra Club. He moved to the Netherlands to live with his wife, who is Dutch, but he retains his United States citizenship. He teaches courses on Computer Organization and Operating Systems and supervises the work of PhD candidates at the VU University Amsterdam. On July 9, 2014, he announced his retirement. Teaching Books Tanenbaum's textbooks on computer science include: Structured Computer Organization (1976) Computer Networks, co-authored with David J. Wetherall and Nickolas Feamster (1981) Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, co-authored with Albert Woodhull (1987) Modern Operating Systems (1992) Distributed Operating Systems (1994) Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms, co-authored with Maarten van Steen (2001) 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". His books have been translated into many languages including Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Mexican Spanish, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish. They have appeared in over 175 editions and are used at universities around the world. 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 Sape Mullender, researcher at Bell Labs Robbert van Renesse, professor at Cornell University Leendert van Doorn, distinguished engineer