Officer of the Order of Canada

• Awarded on: October 5, 2006
• Invested on: October 26, 2007

As one of Canada's most prominent software developers, James Gosling has made significant contributions to the computing landscape. At the age of 15, he was writing software programs for the Department of Physics of the University of Calgary. Later, as a doctoral student, he developed Emacs, a text editor for Unix systems. Currently chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems as well as vice president and Sun fellow, he is best known as the father of Java programming language, the most widely used software in technology. True to his roots, he has provided leadership to Alberta's Information and Communications Technology Research Advisory Council and to the Informatics Circle of Research Excellence.