Tom Truscott Biography

Tom Truscott is known to be curious. From his historical work with the USENET to his active role in software development, Tom Truscott is an online pioneer and entrepreneur. In the late 1970's while attending Duke University and working with Bell Labs, his expertise and insight along with his team would result in a communication system that not only still exists 30 years later, but has since been adapted to the current and future roles of the World Wide Web.

One of his the first endeavors into computers were writing a computer chess program and then later working on a global optimizer for C at Bell Labs. Arriving back to Duke University, it was his involvement with UNC alumni Jim Ellis, , ARPANET mailing lists and UNIX that would later result in the foundation of what we know the USENET to be today. After receiving his BS in Physics and Mathematics from Duke University in 1975, Tom Truscott would go on to refine and work with others to perfect a system of online communication in an organizational manner that has since been adopted by almost every social network since - Twitter included. Accomplishing his Masters degree in computer science from Duke in 1981, Truscott then took on VLSI design at the Research Triangle Institute for eight years writing a hardware/software co-design tool and has also built a distributed computing system.

Serving three years as a networking professional at IBM, he later joined SAS. Today, Truscott works on tools that analyze software as a software developer for the SAS Institute. As a member of the ACM, IEEE and Sigma Xi, he is also an author of a number of UNIX related articles. Truscott and Jim Ellis were both recipients of the 1993 Pioneer Award from the EFF and Mr. Truscottt also received the 1995 USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award along with Jim Ellis and Steve Bellovin. Tom can also be found occasionally participating and posting in the USENET community he helped to create.