Ivan Edward Sutherland (born May 16, 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 (al ...

and

Internet pioneer Instead of having a single "inventor", the Internet was developed by many people over many years. The following are some Internet pioneers who contributed to its early and ongoing development. These include early theoretical foundations, specifyi ...

, widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. His early work in

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...

as well as his

teaching Teaching is the practice implemented by a ''teacher'' aimed at transmitting skills (knowledge, know-how, and interpersonal skills) to a learner, a student, or any other audience in the context of an educational institution. Teaching is closely re ...

with

David C. Evans David Cannon Evans (February 24, 1924 – October 3, 1998) was the founder of the computer science department at the University of Utah and co-founder (with Ivan Sutherland) of Evans & Sutherland, a pioneering firm in computer graphics hardwar ...

in that subject at the University of Utah in the 1970s was pioneering in the field. Sutherland, Evans, and their students from that era developed several foundations of modern computer graphics. He received 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 ...

from the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

in 1988 for the invention of

Sketchpad Sketchpad (a.k.a. Robot Draftsman) is a computer program written by Ivan Sutherland in 1963 in the course of his PhD thesis, for which he received the Turing Award in 1988, and the Kyoto Prize in 2012. It pioneered human–computer interaction ( ...

, an early predecessor to the sort of

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

that has become ubiquitous in personal computers. He is a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

, as well as 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 Nati ...

among many other major awards. In 2012 he was awarded the

Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology The Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology is awarded once a year by the Inamori Foundation. The Prize is one of three Kyoto Prize categories; the others are the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy. The first Kyo ...

for "pioneering achievements in the development of computer graphics and interactive interfaces".

Biography

Sutherland's father was from New Zealand; his mother was from Scotland. His family moved to

Wilmette, Illinois Wilmette is a village in New Trier Township, Cook County, Illinois, United States. Bordering Lake Michigan and Evanston, Illinois, it is located north of Chicago's downtown district. Wilmette had a population of 27,087 at the 2010 census. The ...

, then

Scarsdale, New York Scarsdale is a town and village in Westchester County, New York, United States. The Town of Scarsdale is coextensive with the Village of Scarsdale, but the community has opted to operate solely with a village government, one of several village ...

, for his father's career.

Bert Sutherland William Robert Sutherland (May 10, 1936 – February 18, 2020) was an American computer scientist who was the longtime manager of three prominent research laboratories, including Sun Microsystems Laboratories (1992–1998), the Systems Sci ...

was his elder brother. Ivan Sutherland earned his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...

in electrical engineering from the

Carnegie Institute of Technology Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, his master's degree from

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

, and his Ph.D. from

MIT 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 the mo ...

in EECS in 1963. Sutherland invented

in 1962 while at MIT.

Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American people, American mathematician, electrical engineering, electrical engineer, and cryptography, cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-o ...

signed on to supervise Sutherland's computer drawing thesis. Among others on his thesis committee were

Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, an ...

and Steven Coons. Sketchpad was an innovative program that influenced alternative forms of interaction with computers. Sketchpad could accept constraints and specified relationships among segments and arcs, including the diameter of arcs. It could draw both horizontal and vertical lines and combine them into figures and shapes. Figures could be copied, moved, rotated, or resized, retaining their basic properties. Sketchpad also had the first window-drawing program and clipping algorithm, which allowed zooming. Sketchpad ran on the

Lincoln TX-2 The MIT Lincoln Laboratory TX-2 computer was the successor to the Lincoln TX-0 and was known for its role in advancing both artificial intelligence and human–computer interaction. Wesley A. Clark was the chief architect of the TX-2. Specific ...

computer and influenced

Douglas Engelbart Douglas Carl Engelbart (January 30, 1925 – July 2, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor, and an early computer and Internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on founding the field of human–computer interaction, particularly ...

oN-Line System NLS, or the "oN-Line System", was a revolutionary computer collaboration system developed in the 1960s. Designed by Douglas Engelbart and implemented by researchers at the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at the Stanford Research Institute (S ...

. Sketchpad, in turn, was influenced by the conceptual

Memex Memex is a hypothetical electromechanical device for interacting with microform documents and described in Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think". Bush envisioned the memex as a device in which individuals would compress and store all of ...

as envisioned by

Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all wartime ...

in his influential paper "

As We May Think "As We May Think" is a 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush which has been described as visionary and influential, anticipating many aspects of information society. It was first published in ''The Atlantic'' in July 1945 and republished in an abridged v ...

". Sutherland replaced

J. C. R. Licklider Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (; March 11, 1915 – June 26, 1990), known simply as J. C. R. or "Lick", was an American psychologistMiller, G. A. (1991), "J. C. R. Licklider, psychologist", ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of Am ...

as the head of the US Defense Department Advanced Research Project Agency's

Information Processing Techniques Office The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), originally "Command and Control Research",Lyon, Matthew; Hafner, Katie (1999-08-19). ''Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet'' (p. 39). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. was par ...

(IPTO), when Licklider took a job at IBM in 1964. From 1965 to 1968, Sutherland was an associate professor of electrical engineering at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. Work with student Danny Cohen in 1967 led to the development of the Cohen–Sutherland computer graphics line clipping algorithm. In 1968, with his students

Bob Sproull Robert Fletcher "Bob" Sproull (born c. 1945) is an American computer scientist, who worked for Oracle Corporation where he was director of Oracle Labs in Burlington, Massachusetts. He is currently an adjunct professor at the College of Informat ...

, Quintin Foster, Danny Cohen, and others he created the first head-mounted display that rendered images for the viewer's changing pose, as sensed by The Sword of Damocles, thus making the first

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

system. A prior system,

Sensorama The Sensorama was a machine that is one of the earliest known examples of immersive, multi-sensory (now known as multimodal) technology. This technology, which was introduced in 1962 by Morton Heilig, is considered one of the earliest virtual rea ...

, used a

head-mounted display A head-mounted display (HMD) is a display device, worn on the head or as part of a helmet (see Helmet-mounted display for aviation applications), that has a small display optic in front of one (monocular HMD) or each eye ( binocular HMD). An H ...

to play back static video and other sensory stimuli. The optical see-through head-mounted display used in Sutherland's VR system was a stock item used by U.S. military helicopter pilots to view video from cameras mounted on the helicopter's belly. From 1968 to 1974, Sutherland was a professor at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

. Among his students there were

Alan Kay Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012 is an American computer scientist best known for his pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) d ...

, inventor of the

Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan Ka ...

language, Gordon W. Romney (computer and cybersecurity scientist), who rendered the first 3D images at U of U, Henri Gouraud, who devised the

Gouraud shading Gouraud shading, named after Henri Gouraud, is an interpolation method used in computer graphics to produce continuous shading of surfaces represented by polygon meshes. In practice, Gouraud shading is most often used to achieve continuous l ...

technique, Frank Crow, who went on to develop

antialiasing Anti-aliasing may refer to any of a number of techniques to combat the problems of aliasing in a sampled signal such as a digital image or digital audio recording. Specific topics in anti-aliasing include: * Anti-aliasing filter, a filter used be ...

methods, Jim Clark, founder of

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

Henry Fuchs Henry Fuchs (born 20 January 1948 in Tokaj, Hungary) is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Federico Gil Professor of Computer Science at the University of Nor ...

, and

Edwin Catmull Edwin Earl "Ed" Catmull (born March 31, 1945) is an American computer scientist who is the co-founder of Pixar and was the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been honored for his contributions to 3D computer graphics (computer sci ...

, co-founder of

Pixar Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californi ...

and now president of

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...

and Pixar Animation Studios. In 1968 he co-founded

Evans & Sutherland Evans & Sutherland is a pioneering American computer firm in the computer graphics field. Its current products are used in digital projection environments like planetariums. Its simulation business, which it sold to Rockwell Collins, sold products ...

with his friend and colleague

. The company did pioneering work in the field of real-time hardware, accelerated

3D computer graphics 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...

, and

printer Printer may refer to: Technology * Printer (publishing), a person or a company * Printer (computing), a hardware device * Optical printer for motion picture films People * Nariman Printer ( fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist * Jame ...

languages. Former employees of Evans & Sutherland included the future founders of

Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

(

John Warnock John Edward Warnock (born October 6, 1940) is an American computer scientist and businessman best known for co-founding Adobe Systems Inc., the graphics and publishing software company, with Charles Geschke. Warnock was President of Adobe for ...

) and

(

Jim Clark James Clark Jr. OBE (4 March 1936 – 7 April 1968) was a British Formula One racing driver from Scotland, who won two World Championships, in 1963 and 1965. A versatile driver, he competed in sports cars, touring cars and in the Indianapol ...

). From 1974 to 1978 he was the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science at

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

, where he was the founding head of that school's computer science department. He then founded a consulting firm, Sutherland, Sproull and Associates, which was purchased by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

to form the seed of its research division, Sun Labs. Sutherland was a fellow and vice president at

. Sutherland was a visiting scholar in the computer science division at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

(fall 2005 – spring 2008). On May 28, 2006, Ivan Sutherland married Marly Roncken. Sutherland and Marly Roncken are leading the research in

Asynchronous Systems The primary focus of this article is asynchronous control in digital electronic systems. In a synchronous system, operations (instructions, calculations, logic, etc.) are coordinated by one, or more, centralized clock signals. An asynchronou ...

Portland State University Portland State University (PSU) is a public research university in Portland, Oregon. It was founded in 1946 as a post-secondary educational institution for World War II veterans. It evolved into a four-year college over the following two decades ...

. He has two children. His elder brother,

, was also a computer science researcher.

Awards

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 on ...

Fellow "for the Sketchpad computer-aided design system and for lifelong contributions to computer graphics and education," 2005 * R&D 100 Award, 2004 (team)R&D 100
*

IEEE John von Neumann Medal The IEEE John von Neumann Medal was established by the IEEE Board of Directors in 1990 and may be presented annually "for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology." The achievements may be theoretical, technological, or ...

, 1998von Neumann Medal
/ref> *

Fellow, 1994ACM Fellow
/ref> *

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...

EFF Pioneer Award, 1994EFF Pioneer
*

ACM Software System Award The ACM Software System Award is an annual award that honors people or an organization "for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both". It is awarded b ...

, 1993 *

, 1988 *

Computerworld ''Computerworld'' (abbreviated as CW) is an ongoing decades old professional publication which in 2014 "went digital." Its audience is information technology (IT) and business technology professionals, and is available via a publication website ...

Honors Program, Leadership Award, 1987 * * Member,

United States 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 Nati ...

, 1978NAS Member
/ref> *

member 1973 "for creative contributions in computer science and computer graphics, particularly in the study of the interfaces between men and machines"NAE member
*

Kyoto Prize The is Japan's highest private award for lifetime achievement in the arts and sciences. It is given not only to those that are top representatives of their own respective fields, but to "those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, ...

2012, in the category of advanced technology. *

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also opera ...

Inductee, 2016. *

Washington Award The Washington Award is an American engineering award. Since 1916 it has been given annually for "accomplishments which promote the happiness, comfort, and well-being of humanity". It is awarded jointly by the following engineering societies: Amer ...

, 2018 *

BBVA Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (), better known by its initialism BBVA, is a Spanish multinational financial services company based in Madrid and Bilbao, Spain. It is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, and is present ...

Fronteras del conocimiento 2019.

Quotes

* "A display connected to a digital computer gives us a chance to gain familiarity with concepts not realizable in the physical world. It is a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland." * "The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining, and a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal." * When asked: "How could you possibly have done the first interactive graphics program, the first non-procedural programming language, the first object oriented software system, all in one year?", Sutherland replied: "Well, I didn't know it was hard." * "It’s not an idea until you write it down." * "Without the fun, none of us would go on!"

Patents

Sutherland has more than 60 patents, including:
US Patent 7,636,361 (2009) Apparatus and method for high-throughput asynchronous communication with flow control

US Patent 7,417,993 (2008) Apparatus and method for high-throughput asynchronous communication

US Patent 7,384,804 (2008) Method and apparatus for electronically aligning capacitively coupled mini-bars

US patent 3,889,107 (1975) System of polygon sorting by dissection

US patent 3,816,726 (1974) Computer Graphics Clipping System for Polygons

US patent 3,732,557 (1973) Incremental Position-Indicating System

US patent 3,684,876 (1972) Vector Computing System as for use in a Matrix Computer

US patent 3,639,736 (1972) Display Windowing by Clipping

Publications

2004 from "CAD software – history of CAD CAM" by CADAZZ *Sutherland's 1963 Ph.D. Thesis from

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 the ...

republished in 2003 by University of Cambridge as Technical Report Number 574,
Sketchpad, A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System
'. His thesis supervisor was

, father of

information theory Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification (science), quantification, computer data storage, storage, and telecommunication, communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist a ...

.
Duchess Chips for Process-Specific Wire Capacitance Characterization, The
by Jon Lexau, Jonathan Gainsley, Ann Coulthard and Ivan E. Sutherland,

Sun Microsystems Laboratories Oracle Labs (formerly Sun Microsystems Laboratories, or Sun Labs) is a research and development branch of Oracle Corporation. The labs were created when Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems. Sun Labs was established in 1990 by Ivan Sutherland and R ...

Report Number TR-2001-100, October 2001
Technology And Courage
by Ivan Sutherland,

Perspectives Essay Series, Perspectives-96-1 (April 1996) *
Counterflow Pipeline Processor Architecture
by Ivan E. Sutherland, Charles E. Molnar (

Charles Molnar Charles Edwin Molnar (1935–1996) was a co-developer of one of the first minicomputers, the LINC (Laboratory Instrument Computer), while a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1962. His collaborator was Wesley A ...

), and Robert F. Sproull (

Report Number TR-94-25, April 1994
Oral history interview with Ivan Sutherland
at

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Sutherland describes his tenure as head of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) from 1963 to 1965. He discusses the existing programs as established by

and the new initiatives started while he was there: projects in graphics and networking, the

ILLIAC IV The ILLIAC IV was the first massively parallel computer. The system was originally designed to have 256 64-bit floating point units (FPUs) and four central processing units (CPUs) able to process 1 billion operations per second. Due to budget con ...

, and the Macromodule program.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sutherland, Ivan American computer scientists American software engineers 1938 births Living people Computer graphics professionals Computer graphics researchers Internet pioneers Virtual reality pioneers Engineers from California Scientists from California Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Sun Microsystems people Turing Award laureates California Institute of Technology faculty Harvard University faculty University of Utah faculty California Institute of Technology alumni Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering alumni Scarsdale High School alumni People from Hastings, Nebraska People from Scarsdale, New York 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American engineers 20th-century American scientists 21st-century American scientists Scientists from New York (state) American people of Scottish descent Engineers from New York (state) Engineers from Nebraska American people of New Zealand descent UC Berkeley College of Engineering faculty Kyoto laureates in Advanced Technology Inventors from Nebraska