Donald Knuth facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Donald Knuth
Knuth in 2011
Born	Donald Ervin Knuth (1938-01-10) January 10, 1938 (age 87) Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
Education	Case Institute of Technology (BS, MS) California Institute of Technology (PhD)
Known for	See list The Art of Computer Programming, TeX, METAFONT, Computer Modern, Knuth's up-arrow notation, Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithm, Knuth–Bendix completion algorithm, MMIX, Robinson–Schensted–Knuth correspondence, LR parser, Literate programming
Spouse(s)	Nancy Jill Carter
Children	2
Awards	See list SIGCSE Outstanding Contribution (1986) Grace Murray Hopper Award (1971) Turing Award (1974) Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1975) National Medal of Science (1979) John von Neumann Medal (1995) Harvey Prize (1995) Kyoto Prize (1996) Foreign Member of the Royal Society (2003) Faraday Medal (2011) BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2010) Turing Lecture (2011) Flajolet Lecture (2014)
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics Computer science
Institutions	Stanford University University of Oslo
Thesis	Finite Semifields and Projective Planes (1963)
Doctoral advisor	Marshall Hall, Jr.
Doctoral students	Leonidas J. Guibas Michael Fredman Scott Kim Vaughan Pratt Robert Sedgewick Jeffrey Vitter Andrei Broder

Donald Ervin Knuth (/kəˈnuːθ/ kə-NOOTH; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is a professor emeritus at Stanford University, meaning he is a retired professor who still keeps his title. He is often called the "father of the analysis of algorithms". This means he helped create the study of how efficient computer programs are.

In 1974, Knuth received the ACM Turing Award. This award is like the Nobel Prize for computer science.

Knuth wrote a famous series of books called The Art of Computer Programming. He also helped create the TeX computer system for making documents look good. He also made METAFONT, a language for designing fonts, and the Computer Modern typefaces.

He also invented literate programming. This is a way of writing computer programs that makes them easier for people to understand. He also designed the MIX and MMIX computer architectures.

Biography

Donald Knuth's Early Life

Donald Knuth was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father owned a printing business. Donald was very clever at solving problems, even when he was young.

For example, in eighth grade, he entered a contest. The goal was to find how many words could be made from the letters in "Ziegler's Giant Bar". The judges found 2,500 words. Donald used a dictionary and a special method. He found over 4,500 words, winning the contest! His school won a new TV, and he got lots of candy bars.

Donald Knuth's Education

In 1956, Donald Knuth received a scholarship to study physics. He went to the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio. There, he first learned about the IBM 650, an early computer. He read the computer's manual and decided to rewrite its code. He thought he could make it better.

In 1958, Knuth wrote a program to help his school's basketball team. He gave "values" to players to guess how many points they might score. This was a new idea at the time. Even Newsweek and CBS Evening News talked about it.

Knuth later switched from physics to mathematics. In 1960, he earned two degrees from Case. His work was so good that the faculty gave him both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree at the same time.

In 1963, he earned his PhD in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology. His main teacher was Marshall Hall.

Early Work in Computer Science

After getting his PhD, Knuth became a professor at Caltech. He also worked as a consultant for Burroughs Corporation. He helped them with computer programming.

In 1962, a company asked Knuth to write a book about computer programming languages. While working on it, he realized he needed to create a basic theory of computer programming first. This led to his famous book series, The Art of Computer Programming. He first planned one book, but it grew into six, then seven volumes! The first volume came out in 1968.

In 1969, Knuth moved to Stanford University. He became a professor of computer science. He later became a professor of "The Art of Computer Programming" in 1990. He retired from regular teaching in 1993.

Donald Knuth's Writings

Knuth is known for his writing as much as for his computer science.

The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP)

"The best way to communicate from one human being to another is through story."

In the 1970s, Knuth felt that computer science was a new field without a clear identity. He noticed that many published papers were incorrect. He wanted to "put straight a story that had been very badly told."

From 1972 to 1973, Knuth spent a year at the University of Oslo in Norway. He planned to write the seventh volume of his book series there. But he had only finished the first two volumes. So, he spent the year working on the third volume instead. It was published in 1973.

Another book, Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science, came from his TAoCP work. Knuth found that computer science students needed certain math skills. So, he created a course at Stanford in 1970 to teach these skills. The notes from this course became the book Concrete Mathematics in 1988.

By 2011, Volume 4A of TAoCP was published. Knuth expects Volume 4 to have at least parts A through F. Volume 4B was published in 2022.

Other Books by Knuth

Knuth also wrote Surreal Numbers. This is a short math story about a different way of thinking about numbers. He wanted the book to help students learn to do their own new research.

He also writes language puzzles for Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics. Knuth enjoys recreational mathematics, which is math done for fun. He has written articles for the Journal of Recreational Mathematics.

Knuth has also appeared in videos on YouTube for channels like Numberphile and Computerphile. He talks about his books and why he doesn't use email.

Books on Religion and Computer Science

Knuth is a Lutheran. He wrote a book called 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated. In this book, he looks at chapter 3, verse 16 of every book in the Bible. Each verse is shown with beautiful calligraphic art.

He also gave lectures at MIT about his views on religion and computer science. These lectures were published in another book, Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About.

Programming

Digital Typesetting

In the 1970s, the publishers of TAOCP changed their printing methods. Knuth was unhappy with the new system. It couldn't make his books look as good as the older method. So, he decided to take a break from his books. He spent time creating his own digital typesetting system. This led to TeX and Metafont.

Literate Programming

While making TeX, Knuth came up with a new way of programming. He called it literate programming. He believed that programmers should think of their programs like works of literature.

Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

Knuth put this idea into practice with his WEB system. This system creates two things from one source file. It makes a readable description of the program and also an executable program. A later version, CWEB, works with other programming languages like C and Java.

Knuth used WEB to create TeX and METAFONT. He published both programs as books in 1986. Around the same time, LaTeX was developed. LaTeX is a popular tool based on TeX that many people use today.

Personal Life

Donald Knuth married Nancy Jill Carter in 1961. They have two children, John Martin and Jennifer Sierra.

Knuth gives informal talks a few times a year at Stanford University. He calls these "Computer Musings." He was also a visiting professor at Oxford University Department of Computer Science until 2017.

Knuth is also an organist and a composer. He and his father both played the organ for Lutheran churches. Knuth and his wife have a large organ in their home. In 2016, he finished a piece for organ called Fantasia Apocalyptica. He says it's a "translation of the Greek text of the Revelation of Saint John the Divine into music." It was first played in Sweden on his birthday in 2018.

Donald Knuth's Chinese Name

Knuth has a Chinese name: Gao Dena (simplified Chinese: 高德纳; traditional Chinese: 高德納; pinyin: Gāo Dénà). A friend gave him this name in 1977 before he visited China. In the 1980 Chinese translation of his book, Knuth explained why he liked his Chinese name. He wanted to be known by the many computer programmers in China.

Donald Knuth's Humor

One of Knuth's reward checks

Knuth used to pay people who found errors in his books. He would pay $2.56 for typos and $0.32 for good suggestions. He chose $2.56 because "256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar." These "Knuth reward checks" became famous. In 2008, he stopped sending real checks because of bank fraud. Now, he gives a "certificate of deposit" from a made-up "Bank of San Serriffe."

He once joked to someone, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." This means he was confident in his math, but hadn't actually tested the program.

Knuth published his first "scientific" article in a school magazine in 1957. It was called "The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures." In it, he used the thickness of Mad magazine as a unit of length.

To show how recursion works (when something refers to itself), Knuth made a funny entry in his book's index. He listed "Circular definition" and "Definition, circular" pointing to each other.

Awards and Honors

Donald Knuth has received many important awards for his work.

• In 1971, he received the first ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award.
• He also won the Turing Award in 1974, which is like the Nobel Prize for computer science.
• Other awards include the National Medal of Science, the John von Neumann Medal, and the Kyoto Prize.

In 1990, he was given a special title at Stanford: Professor of The Art of Computer Programming. He was later named Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming.

Knuth was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1975. He also became a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1981. In 1992, he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. That same year, he stopped his regular teaching to focus on finishing The Art of Computer Programming. In 2003, he became a Foreign Member of the Royal Society.

In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is also a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

See also

In Spanish: Donald Knuth para niños