Alex Martelli (born October 5, 1955) is an Italian computer scientist, a member of the Python Software Foundation. Since early 2005, he works as "Über Tech Lead" for Google, Inc., in Mountain View, California. He holds a Laurea in Electrical Engineering from Bologna University (1980); he is the author of Python in a Nutshell, co-editor of the Python Cookbook, and has written other (mostly Python-related) materials. Martelli won the 2002 Activators' Choice Award, and the 2006 Frank Willison award for outstanding contributions to the Python community.
Before joining Google, Martelli spent a year designing chips with Texas Instruments; 8 years with IBM Research, gradually shifting from hardware to software, and winning three Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards; 12 as Senior Software Consultant at think3 inc, developing libraries, network protocols, GUI engines, event frameworks, and web access frontends; and 3 more as a freelance consultant, working mostly for Open End AB, a Python-centered software house (formerly known as AB Strakt) located in Gothenburg, Sweden. He has taught courses on programming, development methods, object-oriented design, and numerical computing, at Ferrara University and other schools. According to Martelli's self-evaluation, his proudest achievement is the articles that appeared in Bridge World (January/February 2000), which were hailed as giant steps towards solving issues that had haunted contract-bridge theoreticians for decades.