Markus Persson

Markus Alexej Persson, more commonly known as Notch, was the creator of Minecraft and the owner of Mojang AB.

Biography
Persson started programming at the age of seven, using his dad's Commodore 128. He produced his first game (a text-adventure) at the age of eight, with the help of type-in programs. In 2005 he started working as a game developer for King.com, which he left in 2009 to work as a programmer over at Jalbum. At Jalbum he founded the MMORPG Wurm Online, although he no longer works on this. Outside of work he frequently takes part in competitions, including Ludum Dare, LD12 and the Java 4K Game Programming Contest. He lived in Denmark before he moved to Sweden with his parents and went to school there.

Notch had his own part of the Mojang website that can be found here.

On the 16th of January 2012, news filtered through that Notch had passed away overnight from a surfeit of Microsoft. Let that be a warning to you all, Windows users. Switch to Linux now.

Games and other work
Notch has released much of his work, including, but not limited to:

Games: 2.5d Engines:
 * MEG4kMAN, a Mega Man clone featuring old-school graphics.
 * Left 4k Dead, a zombie shooter game inspired by Left 4 Dead.
 * t4kns, a real time strategy game.
 * Miners4k, a game kinda inspired by lemmings and diggers.
 * Hunters4k, a first person shooter.
 * Dungeon4k, a dungeon exploration game.
 * Sonic Racer 4k, a racing game with stolen sprites.
 * Dachon4k, a gravity based shooter.
 * l4krits, a Luxor clone.
 * Blast Passage, an 8-Bit mashup between Bomberman and Gauntlet.
 * Bunny Press, a violent puzzle game made for Ludum Dare 14.
 * Breaking the Tower, a slow-paced strategy game.
 * The Europa Arcology Incident, an RPG-style game Notch made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 16.
 * Infinite Mario Bros, a Super Mario clone featuring an endlessly-long level.
 * Metagun, a puzzle game Notch made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 18.
 * Minecraft 4k, Minecraft in less than 4kb for a Java 4kb competition.
 * Prelude of the Chambered, an escape game Notch made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 21.
 * MiniCraft, a top-down Zelda-esque game with elements from Minecraft, made for Ludum Dare 22.
 * Legend of the Chambered
 * First person shooter prototype in flash
 * Flash doom level renderer
 * Dungeon master type game engine in java (flash version, uses static graphics)

Birthday

 * On June 1st 2011, Notch posted on Twitter that he was 25 years old. 25 is 32, which is indeed his age.
 * Notch programmed the Minecraft splash screen to display "Happy Birthday, Notch!" all day on the 1st of June.