Mike Muuss
{{Short description|American computer programmer and author}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Mike Muuss
| image = Mike Muuss.jpg
| alt = Mike Muuss in 1999.
| caption = Mike Muuss in 1999.
| birth_name = Michael John Muuss
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1958|10|16}}
| birth_place = Iowa City, Iowa
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2000|11|20|1958|10|16}}
| death_place = Havre de Grace, Maryland
| spouse = Susan Pohl
| nationality = American
| other_names =
| known_for =
| occupation =
}}
Image:Pdp11,70 640x507.jpg to analyze the M1 prototype, with Earl Weaver (right).]]
Michael John Muuss (October 16, 1958 – November 20, 2000) was the American author of the freeware network tool ping, as well as the first interactive ray tracing program.
Career
A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Muuss was a senior scientist specializing in geometric solid modeling, ray-tracing, MIMD architectures and digital computer networks at the United States Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland when he died. He wrote a number of software packages (including BRL-CAD) and network tools (including ttcp and the concept of the default route or "default gateway") and contributed to many others (including BIND).
{{cite web
|author= Internet Systems Consortium
|author-link= Internet Systems Consortium
|title= History of BIND software development
|url=https://www.isc.org/software/bind/history
|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081118071434/https://www.isc.org/software/bind/history |archive-date=2008-11-18 |access-date=23 August 2013
}}
However, the thousand-line ping, which he wrote in December 1983 while working at the Ballistic Research Laboratory, is the program for which he is most remembered. Due to its usefulness, ping has been implemented on a large number of operating systems, initially Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) and Unix, but later others including Windows and Mac OS X.
In 1993, the USENIX Association gave a Lifetime Achievement Award (Flame) to the Computer Systems Research Group at University of California, Berkeley, honoring 180 individuals, including Muuss, who contributed to the CSRG's 4.4BSD-Lite release.
Muuss is mentioned in two books, The Cuckoo's Egg ({{ISBN|0-7434-1146-3}}) and Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier ({{ISBN|0-684-81862-0}}), for his role in tracking down crackers. He is also mentioned in Peter Salus's A Quarter Century of UNIX and a link to his website’s ping page is included in How Linux Works ({{ISBN|1718500408}}).
Muuss died in an automobile collision on Interstate 95 on November 20, 2000.{{cite news |url=http://www.ping127001.com/pingpage/muuss.htm |newspaper=Baltimore Sun |date=November 25, 2000 |title=Michael John Muuss, 42, computer expert whose software had key role in Internet |access-date=23 August 2013}} The Michael J. Muuss Research Award, set up by friends and family of Muuss, memorializes him at Johns Hopkins University.
{{cite web
|author = Johns Hopkins University
|title = Awards
|url = http://www.jhu.edu/~admis/catalog/misc/scholarships_awards_prizes.pdf
|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031122182831/http://www.jhu.edu/~admis/catalog/misc/scholarships_awards_prizes.pdf |archive-date=2003-11-22 |access-date=23 August 2013}}
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20000816192106/http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ Mike Muuss's home page]
- [https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html The Story of the PING Program]
- [https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ttcp.html The Story of the TTCP Program]
- [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mod.protocols.tcp-ip/ymOM7LmzEsU/JGur6cVlelMJ ICMP As A Diagnostic Tool?] An Early UseNet Post by Mike Muuss Discussing Ping's history
- [http://brlcad.org/ BRL-CAD]
- [https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=5ae5efcde7b769a0484d00891deb7e68ab55edf7 Towards Real-Time Ray-Tracing of Combinatorial Solid Geometric Models]
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Muuss, Mike}}
Category:People from Iowa City, Iowa
Category:Road incident deaths in Maryland