W. Richard Stevens

William Richard (Rich) Stevens (February 5 1951 Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia –- September 1 1999) was one of the most famous and widely acclaimed authors of UNIX and TCP/IP books.

Biography

Richard Stevens was born in 1951 in Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).His father worked there for the copper industry. The family moved to Salt Lake City, Hurley, New Mexico, Washington, D.C. and Phalaborwa, South Africa. Stevens attended Fishburne Military School in Waynesboro, Virginia. In 1973, he received a B.SC. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan and in 1978 an M.S. and in 1982 a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Arizona. He moved to Tucson in 1975 where he was employed at Kitt Peak National Observatory as a computer programmer until 1982. From 1982 until 1990 he was Vice President of Computing Services at Health Systems International in New Haven, CT. Stevens moved back to Tucson in 1990 where he pursued his career as an author and consultant. He was also an avid pilot and a part-time flight instructor during the 1970s.

Stevens died in 1999, at the age of 48. In 2000, he was posthumously awarded the Usenix Lifetime Achievement Award.

Books

* 1990 - "UNIX Network Programming" - ISBN 0-13-949876-1
* 1992 - "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" - ISBN 0-201-56317-7
* 1994 - "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols" - ISBN 0-201-63346-9
* 1995 - "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2: The Implementation" (with Gary R. Wright) - ISBN 0-201-63354-X
* 1996 - "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 3: TCP for Transactions, HTTP, NNTP, and the UNIX Domain Protocols" - ISBN 0-201-63495-3
* 1998 - "UNIX Network Programming, Volume 1, Second Edition: Networking APIs: Sockets and XTI" - ISBN 0-13-490012-X
* 1999 - "UNIX Network Programming, Volume 2, Second Edition: Interprocess Communications" - ISBN 0-13-081081-9
* 2003 - "UNIX Network Programming Volume 1, Third Edition: The Sockets Networking API" - ISBN 0-13-141155-1

RFCs

Stevens also co-authored several IETF Request for Comments (RFC) documents — informational documents for IPv6 updates to the Berkeley sockets API and a standards document for TCP congestion control.

* Stevens, W. R., and Thomas, M. 1998. "Advanced Sockets API for IPv6," RFC 2292
* Gilligan, R. E., Thomson, S., Bound, J., and Stevens, W. R. 1999. "Basic Socket Interface Extensions for IPv6," RFC 2553
* Allman, M., Paxson, V., Stevens, W. R. 1999. "TCP Congestion Control," RFC 2581

External links

* [http://www.kohala.com/start Stevens' former homepage]
* [http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2000/09/01/rich_stevens/index.html "Guru of the Unix gurus"] by Rachel Chalmers (September 12000) at Salon.com
* [http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=7qt2rn%24dfd%241%40agate-ether.berkeley.edu&filter=0 Usenet post of obituary]