Andries Brouwer

Early Life and Education

Born in 1951 in Amsterdam, Andries Evert Brouwer attended the gymnasium before pursuing higher education in mathematics. He earned his MSc in mathematics from the University of Amsterdam in 1971. In 1976, he received his Ph.D. from Vrije Universiteit, with a thesis entitled "Treelike Spaces and Related Topological Spaces," completed under the supervision of Maarten Maurice and Pieter Baayen — both of whom were students of Johannes de Groot. In 2004, he received an honorary doctorate from Aalborg University.

Academic Career

Following his doctoral graduation, Brouwer began his academic career at the Mathematisch Centrum, the institution later known as Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI). From 1986 to 2012, he served as Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), where he holds the title of Professor Emeritus. He has also served as a specialist in security aspects of Unix and Linux for EiPSI (Eindhoven Institute for the Protection of Systems and Information), TU/e's information security research institute.

Mathematical Research

Brouwer's research spans several areas of discrete mathematics, with particular focus on graph theory, finite geometry, and coding theory. He has published dozens of papers in graph theory and combinatorics, frequently in collaboration with other researchers. His co-authors include at least nine collaborators of Paul Erdős, giving him an Erdős number of 2. Among his notable publications are Distance Regular Graphs (1989, co-authored with Arjeh Cohen and Arnold Neumaier, published by Springer-Verlag) and Spectra of Graphs (2011, co-authored with Willem Haemers, published by Springer).

Hack and NetHack

In December 1984, while working at CWI, Brouwer made the first public release of Hack on Usenet. Hack was originally an implementation of the roguelike game Rogue, written in 1982 by Jay Fenlason and others. Brouwer heavily modified and expanded the codebase, distributing a total of four versions between December 1984 and July 1985. The source code was released as free software and was widely copied, played, and ported to multiple computer platforms.

Brouwer's versions of Hack proved highly influential. When Mike Stephenson assembled a large development team via Usenet in 1987 to produce an enhanced version incorporating changes from many Hack derivatives, the team renamed the project NetHack — a decision made out of respect for Brouwer, who might "...eventually release a new version of his own."

Linux Kernel Contributions

Brouwer has been an active contributor to Linux kernel development. He previously maintained the man pager program and served as maintainer of the Linux man-pages project from 1995 to 2004. He is also a kernel maintainer in the areas of disk geometry and partition handling. He is sometimes referred to online by the handle aeb.