   #copyright

Donald Knuth

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Computing People

   CAPTION: Donald Ervin Knuth

   Photographed by Jacob Appelbaum, 25 October 2005
   Photographed by Jacob Appelbaum, 25 October 2005
         Born        10 January 1938
                     Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
       Residence     USA
      Nationality    US
         Field       Computer Scientist
      Institution    Stanford University
      Alma Mater     Case Institute of Technology
                     California Institute of Technology
   Doctoral Advisor  Marshall Hall, Jr.
   Doctoral Students Vaughan Pratt
                     Robert Sedgewick
                     Jeffrey Vitter
       Known for     TeX
                     The Art of Computer Programming
    Notable Prizes   John von Neumann Medal (1995)
       Religion      Lutheran

   Donald Ervin Knuth ([knuːθ], born January 10, 1938) is a renowned
   computer scientist and professor emeritus at Stanford University.

   Knuth is best known as the author of the multi-volume The Art of
   Computer Programming , one of the most highly respected references in
   the computer science field. He practically created the field of
   rigorous analysis of algorithms, and made many seminal contributions to
   several branches of theoretical computer science. He is also the
   creator of the TeX typesetting system and of the METAFONT font design
   system, and pioneered the concept of literate programming.

Education and academic work

   Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he received his bachelor's degree and
   master's degree in mathematics (simultaneously, his B.S. work being
   regarded as deserving a masters degree) in 1960 at the Case Institute
   of Technology (now part of Case Western Reserve University). In 1963,
   he earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the California Institute of
   Technology, where he became a professor and began work on The Art of
   Computer Programming, originally planned as a seven-volume series. In
   1968, he published the first volume. That same year, he joined the
   faculty of Stanford University.

   In 1971, Knuth was the recipient of the first ACM Grace Murray Hopper
   Award. He has received various other awards including the Turing Award,
   the National Medal of Science, the John von Neumann Medal and the Kyoto
   Prize. After producing the third volume of his series in 1976, he
   expressed such frustration with the nascent state of the then newly
   developed electronic publishing tools (esp. those which provided input
   to phototypesetters) that he took time out to work on typesetting and
   created the TeX and METAFONT tools.

   In recognition of Knuth's contributions to the field of computer
   science, in 1990 he was awarded the singular academic title of
   Professor of the Art of Computer Programming, which has since been
   revised to Professor Emeritus of the Art of Computer Programming.

   In 1992 he became an associate of the French Academy of Sciences. Also
   that year, he retired from regular research and teaching at Stanford
   University in order to finish The Art of Computer Programming. In 2003
   he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. As of 2004, the first
   three volumes of his series have been re-issued, and Knuth is currently
   working on volume four, excerpts of which are released periodically on
   his website. Meanwhile, Knuth gives informal lectures a few times a
   year at Stanford University, which he calls Computer Musings. He is
   also a visiting professor at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory
   in the United Kingdom.

   In addition to his writings on computer science, Knuth is also the
   author of 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated (1991), ISBN 0-89579-252-4, in
   which he attempts to examine the Bible by a process of stratified
   random sampling, namely an analysis of chapter 3, verse 16 of each
   book. Each verse is accompanied by a rendering in calligraphic art,
   contributed by a group of calligraphers under the leadership of Hermann
   Zapf.

Knuth's humor

   Knuth is a famous programmer known for his geek professional humor.
     * He pays a finder's fee of $2.56 for any typos/mistakes discovered
       in his books, because "256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar". (His
       bounty for errata in 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated, is, however,
       $3.16). According to an article in MIT's Technology Review, these
       reward checks are "among computerdom's most prized trophies".
     * Version numbers of his TeX software approach the transcendental
       number π, that is versions increment in the style 3, 3.1, 3.14 and
       so on. Version numbers of Metafont approach the number e similarly.
     * He once warned users of his software, "Beware of bugs in the above
       code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
     * All appendices in the Computers and Typesetting series have titles
       that begin with the letter identifying the appendix.
     * TAOCP v3 (1973) has the index entry "Royalties, use of, 405". Page
       405 has no explicit mention of royalties, but does contain a
       diagram of an "organ-pipe arrangement" in Figure 2. Apparently the
       purchase of the pipe organ in his home (see Personal below) was
       financed by royalties from TAOCP.
     * From the Preface of Concrete Mathematics: When DEK taught Concrete
       Mathematics at Stanford for the first time, he explained the
       somewhat strange title by saying that it was his attempt to teach a
       math course that was hard instead of soft. He announced that,
       contrary to the expectations of some of his colleagues, he was not
       going to teach the Theory of Aggregates, nor Stone's Embedding
       Theorem, nor even the Stone-Čech compactification. (Several
       students from the civil engineering department got up and quietly
       left the room.)
     * Knuth published his first "scientific" article in a school magazine
       in 1957 under the title " Potrzebie System of Weights and
       Measures." In it, he defined the fundamental unit of length as the
       thickness of MAD magazine #26, and named the fundamental unit of
       force "whatmeworry". MAD magazine bought the article and published
       it in the June 1957 issue.
     * Knuth's first "mathematical" article was a short paper submitted to
       a "science talent search" contest for high-school seniors in 1955,
       and published in 1960, in which he discussed number systems where
       the radix was negative. He further generalized this to number
       systems where the radix was a complex number. In particular, he
       defined the quater-imaginary number system, which uses the
       imaginary number 2i as the base, having the unusual feature that
       every complex number can be represented with the digits 0, 1, 2,
       and 3, without a sign.
     * Knuth's article about computational complexity of songs was
       reprinted twice in computer science journals.

Personal

   Knuth's hobbies include music, specifically playing the organ. He has a
   pipe organ installed in his home. Knuth disclaims any particular talent
   in the instrument.

   He does not use e-mail, saying that he used it from about 1975 until
   January 1, 1990, and that was enough for one lifetime. He finds it more
   efficient to respond to correspondence in "batch mode", such as one day
   every three months, to be sent by postal mail.

   He is married to Jill Knuth, who published a book on liturgy titled
   Banner without Words, published by Resource Publications in 1986. They
   have two children.

   He is a member of Theta Chi fraternity.

   Knuth uses the Emacs text editor.

Awards

     * First ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award - 1971
     * Turing Award - 1974
     * National Medal of Science - 1979
     * John von Neumann Medal - 1995
     * Kyoto Prize - 1996

   He also has a Chinese name 高德納 ( pinyin: Gāo Dénà), given in 1977 by
   Frances Yao just before his first visit to China.

Works

   A short list of his works:
     * Donald E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1–4,
       Addison-Wesley Professional

    1. Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms (3rd edition), 1997.
       Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN 0-201-89683-4
    2. Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms (3rd Edition), 1997.
       Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN 0-201-89684-2
    3. Volume 3: Sorting and Searching (2nd Edition), 1998. Addison-Wesley
       Professional, ISBN 0-201-89685-0
    4. Volume 4: Combinatorial Algorithms, in preparation
    5. Volume 5: Syntactic Algorithms, in preparation, estimated to be
       ready in 2015

     * Donald E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, fascicles:

    1. Volume 1, Fascicle 1: MMIX — A RISC Computer for the New
       Millennium, 2005. ISBN 0-201-85392-2
    2. Volume 4, Fascicle 2: Generating All Tuples and Permutations, 2005.
       ISBN 0-201-85393-0
    3. Volume 4, Fascicle 3: Generating All Combinations and Partitions,
       2005. ISBN 0-201-85394-9
    4. Volume 4, Fascicle 4: Generating All Trees -- History of
       Combinatorial Generation, 2006. ISBN 0-321-33570-8

     * Donald E. Knuth, The TeXbook (Reading, Massachusetts:
       Addison-Wesley), 1984. ISBN 0-201-13448-9
     * Donald E. Knuth, The METAFONTbook (Reading, Massachusetts:
       Addison-Wesley), 1986. ISBN 0-201-13444-6
     * Ronald L. Graham, Donald E. Knuth, Oren Patashnik, Concrete
       Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, 2nd edition
       (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley), 1994. ISBN 0-201-55802-5
     * Selected papers series:

    1. Donald E. Knuth, Literate Programming (Centre for the Study of
       Language and Information - Lecture Notes), 1992. ISBN 0-937073-80-6
    2. Donald E. Knuth, Selected Papers on Computer Science (Stanford,
       California: Centre for the Study of Language and Information - CSLI
       Lecture Notes, no. 59), 1996. ISBN 1-881526-91-7
    3. Donald E. Knuth, Digital Typography (Stanford, California: Centre
       for the Study of Language and Information - CSLI Lecture Notes, no.
       78), 1999. ISBN 1-57586-010-4
    4. Donald E. Knuth, Selected Papers on Analysis of Algorithms
       (Stanford, California: Centre for the Study of Language and
       Information - CSLI Lecture Notes, no. 102), 2000. ISBN
       1-57586-212-3
    5. Donald E. Knuth, Selected Papers on Computer Languages (Stanford,
       California: Centre for the Study of Language and Information - CSLI
       Lecture Notes, no. 139), 2003. ISBN 1-57586-381-2 (cloth), ISBN
       1-57586-382-0 (paperback)
    6. Donald E. Knuth, Selected Papers on Discrete Mathematics (Stanford,
       California: Centre for the Study of Language and Information - CSLI
       Lecture Notes, no. 106), 2003. ISBN 1-57586-249-2 (cloth), ISBN
       1-57586-248-4 (paperback)
    7. Donald E. Knuth, Selected Papers on Design of Algorithms (scheduled
       for publication in 2007)
    8. Donald E. Knuth, Selected Papers on Fun and Games (scheduled for
       publication in 2007)

     * Donald E. Knuth, 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated (Madison, Wisconsin:
       A-R Editions), 1990. ISBN 0-89579-252-4
     * Donald E. Knuth, Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
       (Centre for the Study of Language and Information - CSLI Lecture
       Notes no 136), 2001. ISBN 1-57586-326-X

Interviews, lectures, Q&A

     * Doernberg, D. Computer Literacy Interview With Donald Knuth. 7
       December 1993.
     * TUG'95 (St Petersburg, FL, USA) Questions and answers with Prof.
       Donald E. Knuth. TUGboat 17 (1), 1996
     * Woehr, J. An interview with Donald Knuth Dr. Dobb's Journal, April
       1996, p. 16-22.
     * Donald Knuth on The Art of Computer Programming Addison-Wesley
       Innovations, 1996
     * Questions and Answers with Prof. Donald E. Knuth. Czech TUG,
       Charles University, Prague, 1996
     * Knuth meets NTG members, Amsterdam, 13 March 1996.
     * Knuth Comments on Code, Byte magazine, September 1996.
     * Donald Knuth: A life's work in the art of programming Amazon.com,
       1997.
     * U.K. TUG, Oxford, 12 September 1999: Question & Answer Session with
       Donald Knuth. TUGboat, 22 (1/2), 2001.
     * Dr. Dobb's Audio & Video Archive of Knuth's MMIX and God &
       Computers Lectures @ MIT, Fall 1999
     * Donald Knuth: MMIX, A RISC Computer for the New Millennium. Audio
       recording of a presetation at the monthly meeting of the Boston ACM
       30 December 1999
     * Wallace, Mark. The art of Don E. Knuth Interview on salon.com,
       1999.
     * Advogato, 2000, also available as HTML Version
     * AMS, 2001
     * Geek Celebs, 2001
     * Oslo, 2002
     * c't, 2002 (in German)
     * NZZ Folio, 2002 (in German)
     * Donald Knuth, Founding Artist of Computer Science. Audio interview
       by David Kestenbaum on National Public Radio; or Transcript, 14
       March 2005.
     * Free Software Magazine interview by Gianluca Pignalberi, August
       2005.

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