Donald Knuth

Scientists in IT

Biography

Born on January 10, 1938He is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University.

The Art of Computer ProgrammingComprehensive monograph written by Donald Knuth that covers many kinds of programming algorithms and their analysis.

The Art of Computer ProgrammingKnuth began the project, originally conceived as a single book with twelve chapters, in 1962.

Volume 1 – Fundamental Algorithms (chapters 1 and 2)Volume 2 – Seminumerical Algorithms (chapters 3 and 4)Volume 3 – Sorting and Searching (chapters 5 and 6)Volume 4 – Combinatorial Algorithms (chapters 7 and 8 released in several

subvolumes)Volume 5 – Syntactic Algorithms (as of 2011, estimated for release in 2020)

(chapters 9 and 10)Volume 6 – The Theory of Context-Free Languages (planned)Volume 7 – Compiler Techniques (planned)

Big OIn the process of writing the book he also popularized the asymptotic notation (Big O notation) - it characterizes functions according to their growth rates: different functions with the same growth rate may be represented using the same O notation. The letter O is used because the growth rate of a function is also referred to as order of the function.

TeXDonald Knuth was so frustrating about modern electronic publishing tools publishing tools while writing his monograph “The art of Computer Programming” that he decided to develop his own computer typesetting system TeX.Now we know it mostly as LaTeX as the a set of macro expansion for TeX.

Software Patents

As a member of the academic and scientific community, Knuth is strongly opposed to the policy of granting software patents.

Software PatentsKnuth:I’m against patents on thingsthat any student should be expected todiscover. There have been an awful lotof software patents in the U.S. for ideasthat are completely trivial, and thatbothers me a lot. There is an organiza-tion that has worked for many years tomake patents on all the remaining triv-ial ideas and then make these availableto everyone. The way patenting hadbeen going was threatening to makethe software industry stand still.

Quote from “All Questions Answered, Volume 49 #3” magazine

http://www.ams.org/notices/200203/fea-knuth.pdf