Avie "Dr. Mac OS X" Tevanian Leaving Apple CTO Position on Friday

According to a News.com account, Apple's Chief Technology Officer Dr. Avie Tevanian will be leaving Apple this Friday to pursue other interests. Dr. Tevanian was recruited from Carnegie Mellon University to NeXT by Steve Jobs and then brought into Apple after Steve Jobs' return. Apple bought NeXT's operating system called NEXTSTEP to be the successor to Mac OS 9, first called Rhapsody and ultimately Mac OS X. Dr. Tevanian was the senior executive responsible for developing NEXTSTEP at NeXT and Mac OS X at Apple.

Here is his bio and photo posted on Apple's Web site:

Avadis "Avie" Tevanian, Jr., Ph.D
Chief Software Technology Officer
Apple

As chief software technology officer, Avie Tevanian focuses on setting company-wide software technology directions for Apple. Tevanian joined Apple in February of 1997 as senior vice president of Software Engineering and is a recognized pioneer in creating cross-platform development environments used worldwide. Tevanian was appointed to his current role in 2003.

Before joining Apple, Tevanian was vice president of Engineering at NeXT and was responsible for managing NeXT’s industry renowned engineering department. Tevanian started his professional career at Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a principal designer and engineer of the Mach operating system upon which NEXTSTEP is based.

Tevanian joined NeXT as an engineer on the NEXTSTEP team in January 1988. He quickly moved up the ranks and managed the operating system, 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 was vice president of NeXT engineering from March 1995, reporting directly to Steve Jobs.

Tevanian holds a Ph.D. and a Masters of Science degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from the University of Rochester.

Apple has not released a press release but the News.com account noted that Apple's current Vice President of Software Engineering, Bertrand Serlet, will continue to lead Apple's software development efforts. [Bill Fox]