Mark Burgess

Who is Mark Burgess?

Mark Burgess is a researcher and writer at Oslo University College in Norway, who is well known for work in computer science in the field of policy-based configuration management.

Mark Burgess was born in Maghull in the United Kingdom to English parents. He grew up in Bloxham, a small village in Oxfordshire from the age of 5-18, attending Bloxham Primary School, Warriner Secondary School and Banbury Upper School.

Originally interested in physics and astronomy, he went to study astrophysics at the School of Physics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, where he later switched to pure Physics and then Theoretical Physics for his bachelor degree. He stayed on to obtain a Doctor of Philosophy in Theoretical Physics in Newcastle, in the field of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in Non-Abelian Gauge Theories, for which he received the Runcorn Prize.

After completing a doctorate he pursued a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Oslo in Norway and has lived in Oslo ever since. While at Oslo he developed an interest in the behaviour of computers as dynamic systems and began to apply ideas from physics to describe computer behaviour.

Mark Burgess is perhaps best known as the author of the popular configuration management software package CFEngine, but has also made important contributions to the theory of the field of automation and policy based management, including the idea of operator convergence and promise theory.