Computer programming is an art form, like the creation of
poetry or music.
--- Donald E. Knuth
Can Donald Knuth really be just one person? Included among
the 150 papers he has written are three of the most important
algorithms in the field. His magnum opus (he is
currently writing its fourth volume), The Art of Computer
Programming , includes original research and a survey of
most of the field. Earlier volumes have spawned Chinese,
Japanese, Russian and Hungarian editions. Over the span of a
30-year career, Knuth has found time to create powerful
software systems for typography, to write on such diverse
topics as ancient Babylonian algorithms and Biblical psalms,
and to pen a novel. In his ``spare time,'' he plays the
pipe organ which he designed.
Throughout his career, Knuth has received public acclaim and
awards, including computer science's highest prize, the Turing Award,
in 1974, and the National Medal of Science from
President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Yet Knuth regards the accolades
with a certain detachment. The bowl which commemorates
his Turing Award now holds fruit.
Knuth was born in Milwaukee in 1938. His father, the first
college graduate in the Knuth family, started as a grade
school teacher, and later taught bookkeeping in a Lutheran
high school. He also played the church organ on Sundays.
Donald inherited his father's appreciation of music and education,
particularly patterns in language.
I was mostly interested in what the teachers were best at.
We had very good training in the diagramming of sentences.
A bunch of us would have fun after class figuring out the
parts of speech in sentences of poetry.
As editor of the school newspaper, Knuth invented crossword
puzzles. He remembers enjoying the search for patterns in
words.
He began winning awards early on. When Knuth was in eighth
grade, a candy manufacturer sponsored a contest to see who
could compose the most words out of the letters in the
phrase, ``Ziegler's Giant Bar.'' Knuth decided to give it a
try and came in first.
I found approximately 4,500 words without using the apostrophe.
With the apostrophe, I could have found many more.
The judges had only about 2,500 on their master list.
He won a television set (a pricey item in those days) and
enough Ziegler candy bars for the entire school. In high
school, Knuth won honorable mention in the Westinghouse Science
Talent Search with an unusual proposal: The potrzebie
system of weights and measures. With the care that would
mark his later career, Knuth defined his basic units precisely:
the potrzebie to be the thickness of MAD Magazine
26; a MAD to be 48 things; and a whatmeworry, the basic unit
of power. In June of 1957, Mad Magazine itself bought the
piece for 25, the first publication of Donald's prolific
career. But music, not writing or science, took most of his
time during high school.
I thought when I went to college I would be a music major. I
played saxophone, but then the tuba player got into an accident
and I became a tuba player. I arranged a piece for
band that combined all kinds of themes off TV shows
--- Dragnet, Howdy Doody Time, and Bryl Cream. I knew
nothing about copyright law.
His plans to become a musician changed when Case Institute
(later Case Western Reserve) offered him a physics scholarship.
The system channelled anybody with an aptitude for science
into physics. It was post World War II and there was a lot
of excitement in the field.
In high school, Knuth had found mathematics uninspiring. But at
Case, Paul Guenther, who taught freshman calculus, persuaded
him to switch from physics to math. Guenther became Knuth's
mentor in the process.
I had never met a mathematician before. He had a good sense
of humor, but no matter what you said to him, he was
unimpressed.
In 1956, Knuth had his first encounter with a computer, an
IBM 650 --- a pre-FORTRAN machine. He stayed up all night
reading the manual and taught himself basic programming.
The manuals we got from IBM would show examples of programs
and I knew I could do a heck of a lot better than that. So
I thought I might have some talent.