Avie Tevanian

Avadis "Avie" Tevanian, Jr. (born 1961) was the Vice-President of Engineering at NeXT.

Education
Tevanian received his B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. At Carnegie Mellon, Tevanian was a principal designer and engineer of the Mach kernel, upon which NeXTSTEP was based.

NeXT corporate biography

 * (modified to past tense)

Tevanian joined NeXT as an engineer on the NeXTSTEP team in January 1988. He quickly moved up the ranks and managed the operating systems group responsible for NeXTSTEP development and technology advances. Tevanian then managed a team responsible for porting NeXTSTEP to RISC-based systems and development of Portable Distributed Objects, the NeXT technology that made it possible to develop software on multiple operating systems. He became vice president of NeXT engineering in March 1995, reporting directly to founder and CEO Steve Jobs.

A recognized pioneer in creating cross-platform development environments used worldwide, Tevanian headed up the engineering teams that made NeXT's products award-winning and proven.

After NeXT
NeXT was acquired by Apple Computer in 1997, where Tevanian soon became the Chief Software Technology Officer. He was the primary figure in the adapting NeXTSTEP into what would become Mac OS X. He also became a member of the board of embedded software tools company Green Hills Software.

Articles

 * Top NeXT Engineer Faces a Big Task: Make Apple Bloom by Lee Gomes at The Wall Street Journal (1996-12-24)