Michael Bostock 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 data-visualisation specialist. He is one of the co-creators of ''Observable'' and noted as one of the key developers of

D3.js D3.js (also known as D3, short for Data-Driven Documents) is a JavaScript library for producing dynamic, interactive data visualizations in web browsers. It makes use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), HTML5, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) sta ...

, a

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

library used for producing dynamic, interactive, online data visualizations. He was also involved in the preceding Protovis framework.

Early life

Bostock was a PhD student 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 consider ...

, advised by

Jeffrey Heer Jeffrey Michael Heer (born June 15, 1979) is an American computer scientist best known for his work on information visualization and interactive data analysis. He is a professor of computer science & engineering at the University of Washington, ...

Career

Until 2015, Bostock was working for 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 d ...

where he led complex data-visualisation projects. He helped create interactive articles for the New York Times and shared the 2013, 2014, and 2015

Gerald Loeb Award The Gerald Loeb Award, also referred to as the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, is a recognition of excellence in journalism, especially in the fields of business, finance and the economy. The award was estab ...

s for Images/Visuals. Bostock is the CTO and co-founder of Observablehq.com, an online notebooks services for "exploring data manipulation and thinking with code". He is also an adviser to data transformation platform provider

Trifacta Trifacta is a privately owned software company headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Bengaluru, Boston, Berlin and London. The company was founded in October 2012 and primarily develops data wrangling software for data exploration and s ...

. Bostock was interviewed in the Data Stories podcast and presented at Eyeo 2014. The "Innovation Report" of his employer, the New York Times, called him a "digital superstar" and

Edward Tufte Edward Rolf Tufte (; born March 14, 1942), sometimes known as "ET",. is an American statistician and professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale University. He is noted for his writings on information design ...

predicted that he will become one of the most important people for the future of data visualisation.

References

External links

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Mike Bostock
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Bl.ocks
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bostock, Mike Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Stanford University alumni Information graphic designers Gerald Loeb Award winners for Images, Graphics, Interactives, and Visuals The New York Times visual journalists D3.js people