Donald Knuth

Lore & Background

Knuth was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Ervin Henry Knuth and Louise Marie Bohning. His father owned a small printing business and taught bookkeeping. While a student at Milwaukee Lutheran High School, Knuth won a contest by identifying over 4,500 words that could be formed from the letters in 'Ziegler's Giant Bar,' using an unabridged dictionary during a feigned illness. He received a scholarship in physics to the Case Institute of Technology in 1956, where he was introduced to the IBM 650 and rewrote its assembly and compiler code. In 1958, he created a program to help his school's basketball team by assigning 'values' to players to gauge scoring probability, a novel approach reported by Newsweek and CBS Evening News. He switched from physics to mathematics, earning both a Bachelor of Science and a master of science in 1960. He then earned a PhD in mathematics from Caltech in 1963 under Marshall Hall, with a thesis titled 'Finite Semifields and Projective Planes.'

Reader's Guide

Knuth's significance lies in his foundational contributions to computer science as a rigorous discipline. His multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming systematized the analysis of algorithms and popularized asymptotic notation, setting standards for the field. He created the TeX typesetting system and METAFONT, which revolutionized technical publishing. He also developed the WEB and CWEB systems for literate programming, and designed the MIX/MMIX instruction set architectures. Knuth strongly opposes software patents, expressing his opinion to the United States Patent and Trademark Office and European Patent Organisation. His work at Burroughs Corporation included writing an ALGOL compiler and developing the SOL simulation language. He turned down a $100,000 contract to write compilers at Green Tree Corporation to continue at Caltech and Burroughs. His legacy endures through his books, software systems, and the intellectual framework he provided for computer science.

Did You Know?

• Knuth won a contest in eighth grade by identifying over 4,500 words from the letters in 'Ziegler's Giant Bar' using an unabridged dictionary.
• In 1958, he created a program to assign 'values' to basketball players to gauge scoring probability, reported by Newsweek and CBS Evening News.
• He turned down a $100,000 contract to write compilers at Green Tree Corporation to continue at Caltech and Burroughs.
• Knuth wrote a FORTRAN compiler for Univac in summer 1962, which he considered 'I sold my soul to the devil.'

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Donald Ervin Knuth (born 10 January 1938) is an American computer scientist, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, and winner of the 1974 Turing Award." — Donald Knuth "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." — Donald Knuth "I can’t be as confident about computer science as I can about biology. Biology easily has 500 years of exciting problems to work on. It’s at that level." — Donald Knuth "The psychological profiling [of a programmer] is mostly the ability to shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high level. To see something in the small and to see something in the large." — Donald Knuth