Peter Henry Salus is a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, computer scientist, historian of technology, author in many fields, and an editor of books and journals. He has conducted research in

germanistics The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...

, language acquisition, and

computer language A computer language is a formal language used to communicate with a computer. Types of computer languages include: * Construction language – all forms of communication by which a human can specify an executable problem solution to a comput ...

Education and career

Salus has a 1963 PhD in linguistics from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

. His dissertation was ''The Compound Noun in Indo-European: A Survey''. After serving as professor and

dean Dean may refer to: People * Dean (given name) * Dean (surname), a surname of Anglo-Saxon English origin * Dean (South Korean singer), a stage name for singer Kwon Hyuk * Dean Delannoit, a Belgian singer most known by the mononym Dean Titles * ...

University of North Florida The University of North Florida (UNF) is a public research university in Jacksonville, Florida. It is part of the State University System of Florida and is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Sc ...

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 ...

University of Massachusetts The University of Massachusetts is the five-campus public university system and the only public research system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The university system includes five campuses (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and a medical ...

where in 1967 he was involved in the founding of the Department of Linguistics, and

Queens College, City University of New York Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body ...

, he is now largely retired. He has also been executive director of both the USENIX Association and the Sun User Group, and Vice President of the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft (" ...

. He was one of the organizers of the 1996 conference on Freely Redistributable Software in Cambridge. In addition, he has worked for several high tech startups. From 1987 to 1996, he was Managing Editor of the technical journal ''Computing Systems'' (

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

and the USENIX Association).

Contributions

In 1966, Salus worked with

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...

on a translation of the ''

Poetic Edda The ''Poetic Edda'' is the modern name for an untitled collection of Old Norse anonymous narrative poems, which is distinct from the ''Prose Edda'' written by Snorri Sturluson. Several versions exist, all primarily of text from the Icelandic med ...

''. During his work he discovered that the "Airman's Alphabet" in Auden's work was derived from the Eddic poems or more likely the translation by

Bruce Dickins Bruce Dickins, FBA (26 October 1889 – 4 January 1978), a graduate of Magdalene College, Cambridge, was Professor of English Language at the University of Leeds from 1931 to 1946 (where he succeeded E. V. Gordon), teaching medieval English and Ol ...

. In December 1965 Salus attended a meeting of the Tolkien Society in New York. Auden and Salus' comments and intentions to write a book on

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlins ...

were reported by ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' and ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

''. However, Tolkien disapproved of a book on himself and was critical of Auden's reported remarks on his house and Salus' observations on the shape of

Middle-earth Middle-earth is the fictional setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the '' Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf''. Middle-earth is ...

. He is best known for his books on the history of computing, particularly ''A Quarter Century of UNIX'' and ''Casting The Net'' (a history of the Internet up to 1995).

Partial bibliography

*''Völuspá : The Song of the Sybil'' (translated by Paul B. Taylor and W. H. Auden, Icelandic text edited by Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor, 1968) *''On Language: Plato to von Humboldt'' (Holt, Reinholt, and Winston, Inc., 1969) *''Linguistics'' (Bobbs-Merril, 1969) *''Pāṇini to Postal: A Bibliography in the History of Linguistics'' (Linguistic Research, 1971) *''For W. H. Auden, 21 February 1972'' (ed. Peter H. Salus and Paul B. Taylor, 1972) *''Language and the Language Arts'' (with James Flood, Prentice-Hall, 1984) *''A Quarter Century of UNIX'' (Addison Wesley, 1 June 1994; ) *''Casting the Net'' (Addison-Wesley, March 1995; ) *''Handbook of Programming Languages'' (ed.; Indianapolis, IN: Macmillan Technical Pub., 1998, ; four volumes: , , , )Review of ''Handbook of Programming Languages'': * *''Big Book of IPv6 Addressing RFCs'' (Morgan Kaufmann, 2000; ) *''The Complete April Fools' Day RFCs'' (Peer-to-Peer Communications LLC, 2007; ) *''The Daemon, the Gnu & the Penguin'' (Reed Media Services, Sept. 2008; ) — previousl
serialised
on the

Groklaw ''Groklaw'' is a website that covered legal news of interest to the free and open source software community. Started as a law blog on May 16, 2003 by paralegal Pamela Jones (''"PJ"''), it covered issues such as the SCO-Linux lawsuits, the EU ...

website *''The ARPANET Sourcebook: The Unpublished Foundations of the Internet'' (Peer-to-Peer Communications LLC, 2008; )

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Salus, Peter H. American computer scientists Programming language researchers Computer systems researchers Linguists American technology writers GNU people Unix people Solaris people Living people Historians of technology Year of birth missing (living people)