Andries Evert Brouwer (born 1951) is a Dutch mathematician and computer programmer, Professor Emeritus at

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven), abbr. TU/e, is a public technical university in the Netherlands, located in the city of Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its BSc a ...

(TU/e). He is known as the creator of the greatly expanded 1984 to 1985 versions of the

roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player characte ...

computer game ''

Hack Hack may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Games * ''Hack'' (Unix video game), a 1984 roguelike video game * ''.hack'' (video game series), a series of video games by the multimedia franchise ''.hack'' Music * ''Hack'' (album), a 199 ...

'' that formed the basis for ''

NetHack ''NetHack'' is an open source single-player roguelike video game, first released in 1987 and maintained by the NetHack DevTeam. The game is a fork of the 1982 game ''Hack'', itself inspired by the 1980 game '' Rogue''. The player takes the role a ...

''. He is also a

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

. He is sometimes referred to by the handle ''aeb''.

Biography

Born in Amsterdam, Brouwer attended the gymnasium, and obtained his MSc in mathematics at the University of Amsterdam in 1971. In 1976 he received his Ph.D. in mathematics from

Vrije Universiteit The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...

with a thesis entitled "Treelike Spaces and Related Topological Spaces", under the supervision of Maarten Maurice and Pieter Baayen, both of whom were in turn students of

Johannes de Groot Johannes de Groot (May 7, 1914 – September 11, 1972) was a Dutch mathematician, the leading Dutch topologist for more than two decades following World War II.. Biography De Groot was born at Garrelsweer, a village in the municipality of Loppe ...

. In 2004 he received an honorary doctorate from

Aalborg University Aalborg University (AAU) is a Danish public university with campuses in Aalborg, Esbjerg, and Copenhagen founded in 1974. The university awards bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and PhD degrees in a wide variety of subjects within humanities ...

. After graduation Brouwer started his academic career at the Mathematisch Centrum, later

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica The (abbr. CWI; English: "National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science") is a research centre in the field of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is part of the institutes organization of the Dutch Research Co ...

. From 1986 to 2012 he was Professor at

(TU/e).

Work

Brouwer's varied research interests include several branches of

discrete mathematics Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that can be considered "discrete" (in a way analogous to discrete variables, having a bijection with the set of natural numbers) rather than "continuous" (analogously to continuous f ...

, particularly

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of ''graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conne ...

finite geometry Finite is the opposite of infinite. It may refer to: * Finite number (disambiguation) * Finite set, a set whose cardinality (number of elements) is some natural number * Finite verb, a verb form that has a subject, usually being inflected or marked ...

and

coding theory Coding theory is the study of the properties of codes and their respective fitness for specific applications. Codes are used for data compression, cryptography, error detection and correction, data transmission and data storage. Codes are stud ...

. He has published dozens of papers in graph theory and other areas of

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many appl ...

, many of them in collaboration with other researchers. His co-authors include at least 9 of the co-authors of

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( hu, Erdős Pál ; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in ...

, giving him an

Erdős number The Erdős number () describes the "collaborative distance" between mathematician Paul Erdős and another person, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. The same principle has been applied in other fields where a particular individual ...

of 2.

Hack

In December 1984, while at the

(CWI), he made the first public release of ''Hack'' on

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

. ''Hack'' was an implementation of '' Rogue'' originally written in 1982 by

Jay Fenlason A jay is a member of a number of species of medium-sized, usually colorful and noisy, passerine birds in the Crow family, Corvidae. The evolutionary relationships between the jays and the magpies are rather complex. For example, the Eurasian ...

and a few others, but Brouwer heavily modified and expanded it. He distributed a total of four versions of ''Hack'' between December 1984 and July 1985. The

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

was released as

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

, and it was widely copied, played, and

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

to multiple computer platforms. When Mike Stephenson brought together a large development team via Usenet to produce an enhanced version in 1987 incorporating changes from many of the ''Hack'' derivatives, they respected Brouwer's wishes by renaming their game ''

'', as Brouwer might "...eventually release a new version of his own."

Linux kernel

Brouwer has also been involved with the development of

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

computer

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

s based on the Linux kernel. He was previously the

maintainer Maintenance may refer to: Biological science * Maintenance of an organism * Maintenance respiration Non-technical maintenance * Alimony, also called ''maintenance'' in British English * Champerty and maintenance, two related legal doctr ...

of the

man page A man page (short for manual page) is a form of software documentation usually found on a Unix or Unix-like operating system. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and ev ...

r program man and the maintainer of the Linux man-pages project (from 1995 to 2004), and he is a kernel maintainer in the areas of disk geometry and partition handling. Brouwer also serves as specialist in security aspects of Unix and Linux for EiPSI (Eindhoven Institute for the Protection of Systems and Information), TU/e's

information security Information security, sometimes shortened to InfoSec, is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorize ...

research institute.

Selected publications

* *

References

External links

Brouwer's university home page
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brouwer, Andries 1951 births Living people Dutch computer programmers Dutch mathematicians Graph theorists Linux kernel programmers Video game programmers Eindhoven University of Technology faculty Computer security specialists Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam alumni Scientists from Amsterdam