redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. Richard Stallman is the principal author of the gnu compiler collection, a portable optimizing compiler which was designed to support diverse architectures and multiple languages. The compiler now supports over 30 different architectures and 7 programming languages.
Stallman also wrote the gnu symbolic debugger (gdb), gnu emacs, and various other gnu programs.
Stallman graduated from Harvard in 1974 with a BA in physics. During his college years, he also worked as a staff hacker at the MIT artificial intelligence lab, learning operating system development by doing it. He wrote the first extensible emacs text editor there in 1975. In January 1984 he resigned from MIT to start the gnu project.
Stallman received the grace hopper award for 1991 from the association for computing machinery, for his development of the first emacs editor. In 1990 he was awarded a macarthur foundation fellowship, and in 1996 an honorary doctorate from the royal institute of technology in Sweden. In 1998 he received the electronic frontier foundation's pioneer award along with Linus Torvalds. In 1999 he received the yuri rubinski award. In 2001 he received a second honorary doctorate, from the university of Glasgow, and shared the takeda award for social/economic betterment with Torvalds and ken sakamura. in 2002 he was elected to the national academy of engineering.
