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Linus Torvalds Receives 1997 Nokia Foundation Award
December 10, 1997
Nokia Foundation has granted its 1997 Award to Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system and one of the most famous young Finnish researchers in the area of information technology in the world. The Award is worth FIM 50,000.
Nokia Foundation was formed in 1995 to support the development of scientific competence and educational capabilities of information and telecommunications technologies in Finland. This year the foundation also granted scholarships to 26 post-graduate students and five teams supporting interaction between universities and the industry. Additionally, the Foundation granted a visiting fellowship to two well-known professors to participate in study groups at the Finnish universities. The total of the Award, scholarship and fellowship is FIM 913,000.
In selecting the award winner, the Foundation emphasized Linus Torvaldsīs excellent achievements in information and telecommunications technology and especially his inspiring example for young researchers. The Linux operating system developed by Torvalds is one of the most popular Unix operating systems, particularly on PC-based Web servers.
In his speech today at the Nokia Foundation Grant Holder Announcement event, Nokia President and CEO Jorma Ollila emphasized the importance of education, research and development in maintaining the competitiveness of the Finnish telecoms industry. He commented that study time is too long in Finland: "If we could shorten the study time by one year, for example, and spend that time on effective research and development work, we would remarkably strengthen our national competitiveness".
"This cannot mean sacrifices in quality," Ollila emphasized, "shortening the study time means making studies more effective, and not lowering their quality. This supports the way to learn to learn new things more in depth - a skill we will all need more and more often in the future. We will really need people with capabilities to learn and take in new things rapidly," Ollila noted.
According to Ollila, increasingly more distinct goal setting and rapid enter to the market will be also increasingly more necessary for the research and development work. This should be evident in the internal projects of companies as well as in the public-funded projects.
For further information, please contact:
Mr Simo Luiro
Nokia Research Center
Tel. (Int.) +358 9 4376 6468
Read the long version in Finnish
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