Mike Muuss
Michael John Muuss (October 16, 1958 - November 20, 2000) was author of the freeware network tool Ping.
A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, he was a senior scientist at the U.S. Army Research Lab in Maryland when he died, specialising in geometric solid modeling, ray-tracing, MIMD architectures and digital computer networks. He wrote a number of software packages (including BRL-CAD) and network tools but the thousand-line Ping, written in December 1983 while working at the Ballistics Research Lab, is the one he is remembered for.
Due to its usefulness Ping has been implemented on a large number of operating systems, initially BSD Unix, but later others including Windows.
The Usenix Association gave him a lifetime achievement award in 1993.
Mike died in a car crash in November 2000.