Bui Tuong Phong (December 14, 1942 – July 1975) was a

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making ...

ese-born

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 ...

researcher and pioneer. He invented the widely used Phong shading algorithm and Phong reflection model.

Life

Phong was born in

Hanoi Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi i ...

, then

French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...

. After attending the

Lycée Albert Sarraut Lycée Albert Sarraut was a French lyceum in Hanoi, Vietnam, during the French colonial period, active from 1919 to 1965. It was one of 69 high schools founded by the French in their colonies worldwide, named for Albert Sarraut. The school offered ...

there, he moved with his family to

Saigon , population_density_km2 = 4,292 , population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2 , population_demonym = Saigonese , blank_name = GRP (Nominal) , blank_info = 2019 , blank1_name = – Total , blank1_ ...

in 1954, where he attended the Lycée Jean Jacques Rousseau. He went to France in 1964 and was admitted to the Grenoble Institute of Technology. He received his from Grenoble in 1966 and his ''

Diplôme d'Ingénieur The Diplôme d'Ingénieur (, often abbreviated as ''Dipl. Ing.'') is a postgraduate degree in engineering ''(see Engineer's Degrees in Europe)'' usually awarded by the Grandes Écoles in engineering. It is generally obtained after five to seven ye ...

'' from the ENSEEIHT, Toulouse, in 1968. In 1968, he joined the (then

IRIA , stylized as ''I・Я・I・A ZЁIЯAM THE ANIMATION'', is a six-episode original video animation (OVA) anime series produced by Ashi Productions and directed by Tetsurō Amino. The series serves as a prequel to the original live-action film ' ...

) as a researcher in Computer Science, working in the development of

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s for digital computers. He went to the University of Utah College of Engineering in September 1971 as a research assistant in Computer Science and he received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1973. Phong knew that he was terminally ill with

leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ...

while he was a student. In 1975, after his tenure at the University of Utah, Phong joined

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 ...

as a professor. Phong was married to Bùi Thị Ngọc Bích from Nha Trang, Vietnam, in 1969 in Paris, France. He and his wife had one daughter. According to Professor

Ivan Sutherland Ivan Edward Sutherland (born May 16, 1938) is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer, widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subject ...

and Phong's friends, Phong was intelligent, affable and modest. About improving the quality of synthesized images he wrote, "We do not expect to be able to display the object exactly as it would appear in reality, with texture, overcast shadows, etc. We hope only to display an image that approximates the real object closely enough to provide a certain degree of realism." Two years after receiving his Ph.D., Phong died in 1975 of end-stage leukemia.

Work on computer graphics

Phong was the inventor of the Phong reflection model and the Phong shading interpolation method, techniques widely used in computer graphics. He published the description of the algorithms in his 1973 PhD dissertation and a 1975 paper. He developed the first algorithm for simulating specular phenomena. When working on his doctorate, he was very focused on selecting a topic and completing his dissertation very fast. Professor

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 ...

very enthusiastically supported him in this project. Professor

worked with him for improving the previous

Mach banding Mach bands is an optical illusion named after the physicist Ernst Mach. It exaggerates the contrast between edges of the slightly differing shades of gray, as soon as they contact one another, by triggering edge-detection in the human visual s ...

problems, and on using normals for shading. His fellow students also supported him very much, including James H. Clark,

Franklin C. Crow Franklin C. (Frank) Crow is a computer scientist who has made important contributions to computer graphics, including some of the first practical spatial anti-aliasing techniques. Crow also proposed the shadow volume technique for generating geo ...

, George Randall, Dennis Ting and John Riley. He finished his dissertation much faster than other students of the time did. Phong, Robert McDermott, Jim Clark and Raphael Rom had created the very first computer graphics generated picture that looked like its physical model: the

Volkswagen Beetle The Volkswagen Beetle—officially the Volkswagen Type 1, informally in German (meaning "beetle"), in parts of the English-speaking world the Bug, and known by many other nicknames in other languages—is a two-door, rear-engine economy car, ...

. As a computer graphics icon, it still crops up in highly respected journals and animated features.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bui, Tuong Phong 1942 births 1975 deaths Computer graphics researchers People from Hanoi Vietnamese expatriates in the United States Vietnamese academics Vietnamese scientists University of Utah alumni Deaths from leukemia Deaths from cancer in California People educated at Lycee Albert Sarraut

Life

Work on computer graphics

See also

References