Donald Ervin Knuth (
; born January 10, 1938) is an American
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...
,
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
, and
professor emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
. He is the 1974 recipient of the
ACM Turing Award, informally considered the
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
of computer science.
Knuth has been called the "father of the
analysis of algorithms
In computer science, the analysis of algorithms is the process of finding the computational complexity of algorithms—the amount of time, storage, or other resources needed to execute them. Usually, this involves determining a function that r ...
".
He is the author of the multi-volume work ''
The Art of Computer Programming
''The Art of Computer Programming'' (''TAOCP'') is a comprehensive monograph written by the computer scientist Donald Knuth presenting programming algorithms and their analysis. Volumes 1–5 are intended to represent the central core of com ...
'' and contributed to the development of the rigorous analysis of the
computational complexity
In computer science, the computational complexity or simply complexity of an algorithm is the amount of resources required to run it. Particular focus is given to computation time (generally measured by the number of needed elementary operations) ...
of algorithms and systematized formal mathematical techniques for it. In the process, he also popularized the
asymptotic notation. In addition to fundamental contributions in several branches of
theoretical computer science
computer science (TCS) is a subset of general computer science and mathematics that focuses on mathematical aspects of computer science such as the theory of computation, lambda calculus, and type theory.
It is difficult to circumscribe the ...
, Knuth is the creator of the
TeX computer typesetting system, the related
METAFONT font definition language and rendering system, and the
Computer Modern family of typefaces.
As a writer and scholar, Knuth created the
WEB
Web most often refers to:
* Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal
* World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system
Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to:
Computing
* WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
and
CWEB
Web is a computer programming system created by Donald E. Knuth as the first implementation of what he called "literate programming": the idea that one could create software as works of literature, by embedding source code inside descriptive ...
computer programming systems designed to encourage and facilitate
literate programming
Literate programming is a programming paradigm introduced in 1984 by Donald Knuth in which a computer program is given as an explanation of its logic in a natural language, such as English, interspersed (embedded) with snippets of macros an ...
, and designed the
MIX/
MMIX
MMIX (pronounced ''em-mix'') is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computing (RISC) architecture designed by Donald Knuth, with significant contributions by John L. Hennessy (who contributed to the design of the MIPS architecture) and Richard L ...
instruction set architectures. Knuth strongly opposes the granting of
software patent
A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, libraries, user interface, or algorithm.
Background
A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time ...
s, having expressed
his opinion to the
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alex ...
and
European Patent Organisation.
Biography
Early life
Knuth was born in
Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee i ...
,
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
, to Ervin Henry Knuth and Louise Marie Bohning.
He describes his heritage as "Midwestern Lutheran German". His father owned a small printing business and taught bookkeeping.
Donald, a student at
Milwaukee Lutheran High School, thought of ingenious ways to solve problems. For example, in eighth grade, he entered a contest to find the number of words that the letters in "Ziegler's Giant Bar" could be rearranged to create; the judges had identified 2,500 such words. With time gained away from school due to a pretend stomach ache, and working the problem the other way, Knuth used an unabridged dictionary and determined if each dictionary entry could be formed using the letters in the phrase. Using this algorithm, he identified over 4,500 words, winning the contest.
As prizes, the school received a new television and enough candy bars for all of his schoolmates to eat.
Education
Knuth received a scholarship in physics to the
Case Institute of Technology (now part of
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...
) in
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the United States, U.S. U.S. state, state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along ...
, Ohio, enrolling in 1956.
He also joined the Beta Nu Chapter of the
Theta Chi fraternity. While studying physics at Case, Knuth was introduced to the
IBM 650
The IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Data-Processing Machine is an early digital computer produced by IBM in the mid-1950s. It was the first mass produced computer in the world. Almost 2,000 systems were produced, the last in 1962, and it was the fir ...
, an early commercial
computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...
. After reading the computer's manual, Knuth decided to rewrite the
assembly and
compiler
In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...
code for the machine used in his school, because he believed he could do it better.
In 1958, Knuth created a program to help his school's basketball team win their games. He assigned "values" to players in order to gauge their probability of getting points, a novel approach that ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'' and ''
CBS Evening News'' later reported on.
Knuth was one of the founding editors of Case Institute's ''Engineering and Science Review'', which won a national award as best technical magazine in 1959.
He then switched from physics to mathematics, and received two degrees from Case in 1960:
his bachelor of science degree, and simultaneously a master of science by a special award of the faculty, who considered his work exceptionally outstanding.
In 1963, with mathematician
Marshall Hall as his adviser,
[ he earned a PhD in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology for a thesis entitled ''Finite Semifields and Projective Planes''.
]
Early work
After receiving his PhD, Knuth joined Caltech's faculty as an assistant professor.[
He accepted a commission to write a book on computer ]programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language.
The description of a programming ...
compiler
In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs tha ...
s. While working on this project, Knuth decided that he could not adequately treat the topic without first developing a fundamental theory of computer programming, which became ''The Art of Computer Programming
''The Art of Computer Programming'' (''TAOCP'') is a comprehensive monograph written by the computer scientist Donald Knuth presenting programming algorithms and their analysis. Volumes 1–5 are intended to represent the central core of com ...
''. He originally planned to publish this as a single book. As Knuth developed his outline for the book, he concluded that he required six volumes, and then seven, to thoroughly cover the subject. He published the first volume in 1968.
Just before publishing the first volume of ''The Art of Computer Programming'', Knuth left Caltech to accept employment with the Institute for Defense Analyses' Communications Research Division, then situated on the Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
campus, which was performing mathematical research in cryptography
Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adv ...
to support the National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...
.
In 1967, Knuth attended a Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific soci ...
conference and someone asked what he did. At the time, computer science was partitioned into numerical analysis
Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). It is the study of numerical methods ...
, artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...
and programming languages. Based on his study and ''The Art of Computer Programming'' book, Knuth decided the next time someone asked he would say, "Analysis of algorithms."
Knuth then left his position to join the Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
faculty in 1969, where he is now Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus.
Writings
Knuth is a writer, as well as a computer scientist.
''The Art of Computer Programming'' (''TAOCP'')
In the 1970s, Knuth described computer science as "a totally new field with no real identity. And the standard of available publications was not that high. A lot of the papers coming out were quite simply wrong. ... So one of my motivations was to put straight a story that had been very badly told."
From 1972 to 1973, Knuth spent a year at the University of Oslo
The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...
among people such as Ole-Johan Dahl. This is where he had originally intended to write the seventh volume in his book series, a volume that was to deal with programming languages. However, Knuth had only finished the first two volumes when he came to Oslo, and thus spent the year on the third volume, next to teaching. The third volume in the series came out just after Knuth returned to Stanford in 1973.
By 2011, Volume 4A had been published. '' Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science'' 2nd ed., which originated with an expansion of the mathematical preliminaries section of Volume 1 of ''TAoCP'', has also been published. In April 2020, Knuth said he anticipates that Volume 4 will have at least parts A through F. Volume 4B was published in October 2022.
Other works
Knuth is also the author of '' Surreal Numbers'',[ a mathematical novelette on John Conway's ]set theory
Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly concern ...
construction of an alternate system of numbers. Instead of simply explaining the subject, the book seeks to show the development of the mathematics. Knuth wanted the book to prepare students for doing original, creative research.
In 1995, Knuth wrote the foreword to the book ''A=B'' by Marko Petkovšek, Herbert Wilf and Doron Zeilberger. Knuth is also an occasional contributor of language puzzles to '' Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics''.
Knuth has also delved into recreational mathematics. He contributed articles to the '' Journal of Recreational Mathematics'' beginning in the 1960s, and was acknowledged as a major contributor in Joseph Madachy
Joseph Steven Madachy (March 16, 1927 – March 27, 2014) was a research chemist, technical editor and recreational mathematician. He was the lead editor of ''Journal of Recreational Mathematics'' for nearly 30 years and then served as editor emer ...
's ''Mathematics on Vacation''.
Knuth has also appeared in a number of Numberphile and Computerphile videos on YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
where he has discussed topics from writing ''Surreal Numbers'' to why he does not use email.
Works regarding his religious beliefs
In addition to his writings on computer science, Knuth, a Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched ...
, is also the author of ''3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated'', in which he examines the Bible by a process of systematic sampling In survey methodology, systematic sampling is a statistical method involving the selection of elements from an ordered sampling frame. The most common form of systematic sampling is an equiprobability method.
In this approach, progression throu ...
, 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
Hermann Zapf (; 8 November 1918 – 4 June 2015) was a German type designer and calligrapher who lived in Darmstadt, Germany. He was married to the calligrapher and typeface designer Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse. Typefaces he designed include ...
. Subsequently, he was invited to give a set of lectures at MIT on his views on religion and computer science behind his 3:16 project, resulting in another book, '' Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About'', where he published the lectures ''"God and Computer Science"''.
Opinion on software patents
Knuth is strongly opposed to the policy of granting software patent
A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, libraries, user interface, or algorithm.
Background
A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time ...
s for trivial solutions that should be obvious, but has expressed more nuanced views for nontrivial solutions such as the interior-point method
Interior-point methods (also referred to as barrier methods or IPMs) are a certain class of algorithms that solve linear and nonlinear convex optimization problems.
An interior point method was discovered by Soviet mathematician I. I. Dikin in 1 ...
of linear programming
Linear programming (LP), also called linear optimization, is a method to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a mathematical model whose requirements are represented by linear relationships. Linear programming is ...
. He has expressed his disagreement directly to both the United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alex ...
and European Patent Organisation.
Computer Musings
Knuth gives informal lectures a few times a year at Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
, which he titled "Computer Musings". He was a visiting professor at the Oxford University Department of Computer Science
The Department of Computer Science is the computer science department of the University of Oxford, England, which is part of the university's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division. It was founded in 1957 as the Computing Laboratory ...
in the United Kingdom until 2017 and an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College
Magdalen College (, ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. Today, it is the fourth wealthiest college, with a financial endowment of £332.1 million as of 2019 and one of the ...
.
Programming
Digital typesetting
In the 1970s the publishers of TAOCP abandoned Monotype in favor of phototypesetting
Phototypesetting is a method of setting type. It uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper.
It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing (digital typesetting).
T ...
. Knuth became so frustrated with the inability of the latter system to approach the quality of the previous volumes, which were typeset using the older system, that he took time out to work on digital typesetting and created TeX and Metafont.
Literate programming
While developing TeX, Knuth created a new methodology of programming, which he called literate programming
Literate programming is a programming paradigm introduced in 1984 by Donald Knuth in which a computer program is given as an explanation of its logic in a natural language, such as English, interspersed (embedded) with snippets of macros an ...
, because he believed that programmers should think of programs as works of literature. "Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do."
Knuth embodied the idea of literate programming in the WEB
Web most often refers to:
* Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal
* World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system
Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to:
Computing
* WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
system. The same WEB source is used to ''weave'' a TeX file, and to ''tangle'' a Pascal
Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name
* Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name
** Blaise Pascal, Frenc ...
source file. These in their turn produce a readable description of the program and an executable binary respectively. A later iteration of the system, CWEB
Web is a computer programming system created by Donald E. Knuth as the first implementation of what he called "literate programming": the idea that one could create software as works of literature, by embedding source code inside descriptive ...
, replaces Pascal with C.
Knuth used WEB to program TeX and METAFONT, and published both programs as books: ''TeX: The Program'', which was originally published in 1986, and ''METAFONT: The Program'', which was originally published in 1986. Around the same time, LaTeX
Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well.
In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...
, the now-widely adopted macro package based on TeX, was first developed by Leslie Lamport, who later published its first user manual in 1986.
Music
Knuth is an organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists. In addition, an organist may accompany congregational ...
and a composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and Def ...
. In 2016 he completed a musical piece for organ
Organ may refer to:
Biology
* Organ (biology), a part of an organism
Musical instruments
* Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone
** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument
** Hammond ...
titled ''Fantasia Apocalyptica'', which he describes as "translation of the Greek text of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine into music". It was premièred in Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...
on January 10, 2018.
Personal life
Donald Knuth married Nancy Jill Carter on 24 June 1961, while he was a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology. They have two children: John Martin Knuth and Jennifer Sierra Knuth.
Chinese name
Knuth's Chinese name is Gao Dena (). In 1977, he was given this name by Frances Yao, shortly before making a 3-week trip to China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
. In the 1980 Chinese translation of Volume 1 of ''The Art of Computer Programming'' (), Knuth explains that he embraced his Chinese name because he wanted to be known by the growing numbers of computer programmers in China at the time. In 1989, his Chinese name was placed atop the ''Journal of Computer Science and Technology'' header, which Knuth says "makes me feel close to all Chinese people although I cannot speak your language".
Health concerns
In 2006, Knuth was diagnosed with prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is cancer of the prostate. Prostate cancer is the second most common cancerous tumor worldwide and is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related mortality among men. The prostate is a gland in the male reproductive system that su ...
. He underwent surgery in December that year and stated, "a little bit of radiation therapy ... as a precaution but the prognosis looks pretty good", as he reported in his video autobiography.
Humor
Knuth used to pay a finder's fee of $2.56 for any typographical errors or mistakes discovered in his books, because "256 pennies is one hexadecimal
In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, he ...
dollar", and $0.32 for "valuable suggestions". According to an article in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...
's ''Technology Review'', these Knuth reward checks are "among computerdom's most prized trophies". Knuth had to stop sending real checks in 2008 due to bank fraud, and instead now gives each error finder a "certificate of deposit" from a publicly listed balance in his fictitious "Bank of San Serriffe".
He once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
Knuth published his first "scientific" article in a school magazine in 1957 under the title "The Potrzebie
Potrzebie (; dative/locative of '' potrzeba'', "a need") is a Polish word popularized by its non sequitur use as a running gag in the early issues of '' Mad'' not long after the comic book began in 1952.
Origin
''Mad'' editor Harvey Kurtzman s ...
System of Weights and Measures". In it, he defined the fundamental unit
A base unit (also referred to as a fundamental unit) is a unit adopted for measurement of a '' base quantity''. A base quantity is one of a conventionally chosen subset of physical quantities, where no quantity in the subset can be expressed in ter ...
of length
Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Inte ...
as the thickness of '' Mad'' No. 26, and named the fundamental unit of force
In physics, a force is an influence that can change the motion of an object. A force can cause an object with mass to change its velocity (e.g. moving from a state of rest), i.e., to accelerate. Force can also be described intuitively as a ...
"whatmeworry". ''Mad'' published the article in issue No. 33 (June 1957).
To demonstrate the concept of recursion
Recursion (adjective: ''recursive'') occurs when a thing is defined in terms of itself or of its type. Recursion is used in a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics to logic. The most common application of recursion is in mathematic ...
, Knuth intentionally referred "Circular definition" and "Definition, circular" to each other in the index of ''The Art of Computer Programming
''The Art of Computer Programming'' (''TAOCP'') is a comprehensive monograph written by the computer scientist Donald Knuth presenting programming algorithms and their analysis. Volumes 1–5 are intended to represent the central core of com ...
, Volume 1''.
The preface of '' Concrete Mathematics'' has the following paragraph:
At the TUG 2010 Conference, Knuth announced a satirical XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
-based successor to TeX, titled "iTeX" (, performed with a bell ringing), which would support features such as arbitrarily scaled irrational units, 3D printing
3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...
, input from seismographs and heart monitors, animation, and stereophonic sound.
Awards and honors
In 1971, Knuth was the recipient of the first ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award
The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or ser ...
. He has received various other awards including the Turing Award
The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...
, the National Medal of Science, the John von Neumann Medal, and the Kyoto Prize.
Knuth was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society (DFBCS) in 1980 in recognition of Knuth's contributions to the field of computer science.
In 1990 he was awarded the one-of-a-kind academic title of ''Professor of The Art of Computer Programming'', which has since been revised to ''Professor Emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
of The Art of Computer Programming''.
Knuth was elected to the National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...
in 1975. He was also elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1981 for organizing vast subject areas of computer science so that they are accessible to all segments of the computing community. In 1992, he became an associate of the French Academy of Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at ...
. Also that year, he retired from regular research and teaching at Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
in order to finish ''The Art of Computer Programming
''The Art of Computer Programming'' (''TAOCP'') is a comprehensive monograph written by the computer scientist Donald Knuth presenting programming algorithms and their analysis. Volumes 1–5 are intended to represent the central core of com ...
''. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2003.[
Knuth was elected as a Fellow (first class of Fellows) of the ]Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific soci ...
in 2009 for his outstanding contributions to mathematics. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters ( no, Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway.
History
The Royal Frederick Unive ...
. In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meeting ...
and a member of the American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
. Other awards and honors include:
* First ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award
The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or ser ...
, 1971
* Turing Award
The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...
, 1974
* Lester R. Ford Award, 1975 and 1993
* Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecturer The Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectureship (also called the Gibbs Lecture) of the American Mathematical Society is an annually awarded mathematical prize, named in honor of Josiah Willard Gibbs. The prize is intended not only for mathematicians, but also ...
, 1978
* National Medal of Science, 1979
* Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, 1985
* Franklin Medal
The Franklin Medal was a science award presented from 1915 until 1997 by the Franklin Institute located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. It was founded in 1914 by Samuel Insull.
The Franklin Medal was the most prestigious of the various awar ...
, 1988
* John von Neumann Medal, 1995
* Harvey Prize from the Technion, 1995
* Kyoto Prize, 1996
* Fellow of the Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact o ...
"for his fundamental early work in the history of computing algorithms, development of the TeX typesetting language, and for major contributions to mathematics and computer science." 1998
* Asteroid 21656 Knuth, named in his honor in May 2001
* Katayanagi Prize, 2010
* BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Information and Communication Technologies, 2010
* Turing Lecture, 2011
* Stanford University School of Engineering Hero Award, 2011
* Flajolet Lecture Prize, 2014
Publications
A short list of his publications include:
''The Art of Computer Programming'':
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''Computers and Typesetting'' (all books are hardcover unless otherwise noted):
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Books of collected papers:
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# Donald E. Knuth, Selected Papers on Design of Algorithms (Stanford, California: Center for the Study of Language and Information—CSLI Lecture Notes, no. 191), 2010. (cloth), (paperback)
# Donald E. Knuth, Selected Papers on Fun and Games (Stanford, California: Center for the Study of Language and Information—CSLI Lecture Notes, no. 192), 2011. (cloth), (paperback)
# Donald E. Knuth, Companion to the Papers of Donald Knuth (Stanford, California: Center for the Study of Language and Information—CSLI Lecture Notes, no. 202), 2011. (cloth), (paperback)
Other books:
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# Donald E. Knuth, The Stanford GraphBase: A Platform for Combinatorial Computing (New York, ACM Press) 1993. second paperback printing 2009.
# Donald E. Knuth, 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated (Madison, Wisconsin: A-R Editions), 1990.
# Donald E. Knuth, Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About (Center for the Study of Language and Information—CSLI Lecture Notes no 136), 2001.
# Donald E. Knuth, MMIXware: A RISC Computer for the Third Millennium (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag— Lecture Notes in Computer Science, no. 1750), 1999. viii+550pp.
# Donald E. Knuth and Silvio Levy, The CWEB System of Structured Documentation (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley), 1993. iv+227pp. . Third printing 2001 with hypertext support, ii + 237 pp.
# Donald E. Knuth, Tracy L. Larrabee, and Paul M. Roberts, Mathematical Writing (Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America), 1989. ii+115pp
# Daniel H. Greene and Donald E. Knuth, Mathematics for the Analysis of Algorithms (Boston: Birkhäuser), 1990. viii+132pp.
# Donald E. Knuth, , 1976. 106pp.
# Donald E. Knuth, Stable Marriage and Its Relation to Other Combinatorial Problems: An Introduction to the Mathematical Analysis of Algorithms.
# Donald E. Knuth, Axioms and Hulls (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag—Lecture Notes in Computer Science, no. 606), 1992. ix+109pp.
See also
* Asymptotic notation
* Attribute grammar
* CC system
* Dancing Links
* Knuth -yllion
* Knuth–Bendix completion algorithm
* Knuth Prize
* Knuth shuffle
* Knuth's Algorithm X
* Knuth's Simpath algorithm
* Knuth's up-arrow notation
* Davis–Knuth dragon
* Bender–Knuth involution
* Trabb Pardo–Knuth algorithm
* Fisher–Yates shuffle
* Robinson–Schensted–Knuth correspondence
* Man or boy test
* Plactic monoid
* Quater-imaginary base
* TeX
* Termial
* The Complexity of Songs
* Uniform binary search
* List of pioneers in computer science
* List of science and religion scholars
References
Bibliography
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External links
Donald Knuth's home page
at Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
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* Knuth discusses software patenting, structured programming
Structured programming is a programming paradigm aimed at improving the clarity, quality, and development time of a computer program by making extensive use of the structured control flow constructs of selection ( if/then/else) and repetition ( ...
, collaboration and his development of TeX.
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Biography of Donald Knuth
from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Donald Ervin Knuth – Stanford Lectures (Archive)
Interview with Donald Knuth
by Lex Fridman
* Siobhan Roberts
The Yoda of Silicon Valley
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', 17 December 2018.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Knuth, Donald Ervin
American computer scientists
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1938 births
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Combinatorialists
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