Alex Martelli

Alex Martelli (born October 5, 1955) is an Italian computer scientist and member of the Python Software Foundation. Since early 2005, he worked as "Über Tech Lead" for Google, Inc. in Mountain View, California. He holds a Laurea in Electrical Engineering from Bologna University (1980); he is the author of "Python in a Nutshell", co-editor of the "Python Cookbook", and has written other (mostly Python-related) materials. Martelli won the 2002 Activators' Choice Award, and the 2006 Frank Willison award for outstanding contributions to the Python community.

Before joining Google, Martelli spent a year designing chips with Texas Instruments; 8 years with IBM Research, gradually shifting from hardware to software, and winning three Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards; 12 as Senior Software Consultant at think3, Inc., developing libraries, network protocols, GUI engines, event frameworks, and web access frontends; and 3 more as a freelance consultant, working mostly for Open End AB, a Python-centered software house (formerly known as AB Strakt) located in Gothenburg, Sweden. He has taught courses on programming, development methods, object-oriented design, and numerical computing, at Ferrara University and other schools. According to Martelli's self-evaluation, his proudest achievement is the articles that appeared in The Bridge World (January/February 2000), which were hailed as giant steps towards solving issues that had haunted contract-bridge theoreticians for decades. Martelli was also the keynote speaker for the 2008 SciPy Conference.

Bibliography

* cite book
last=Martelli
first=Alex
title=Python in a Nutshell
publisher=O'Reilly Media
month=July
year=2006
id=ISBN 0-596-10046-9
* cite book
last=Martelli
first=Alex
coauthors=David Ascher, Anna Ravenscroft
title=Python Cookbook
publisher=O'Reilly Media
month=March
year=2005
id=ISBN 0-596-00797-3

External resources

* Much of Martelli's writing can be found at his [http://www.aleax.it/ personal home page] .
* [http://youtube.com/watch?v=g7V89K8QfgQ Introductory Lecture on Python]

"Note:" This article is based on autobiographical material at http://www.aleax.it/bio.txt, released as GFDL.