Knuth, Donald

Donald Knuth, in full Donald Ervin Knuth, (born January 10, 1938, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.), American mathematician and computer scientist known for his authoritative multivolume series of books The Art of Computer Programming (1968– ) and the text-formatting language TeX.

Knuth received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1960 from the Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University) in Cleveland, Ohio, and his work was so impressive that he was awarded a simultaneous master’s degree. He then earned a doctorate in mathematics in 1963 from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, where he was an assistant and then associate professor from 1963 to 1968.

While still in graduate school, the publishing company Addison-Wesley approached Knuth to write a book on compilers. Knuth instead wrote a first draft of a general survey of computer programming. Addison-Wesley decided that Knuth’s draft should be expanded into seven volumes, and the first volume of The Art of Computer Programming was published in 1968.

Knuth became a professor of computer science at Stanford University in 1968. In the late 1970s Addison-Wesley changed its typesetting from traditional metal typesetting to a process based on photographic reproduction. Knuth thought the photographic process was of poor quality. However, he then saw the high quality that could be produced with digital typesetting and took time out from writing The Art of Computer Programming to develop TeX, a document-preparation system. Because of its precise control of special characters and mathematical formulas, TeX and its variants soon became standard for submitting typeset-ready scientific and mathematical research papers for publication.

Knuth has received many awards and honours, including the Kyoto Prize (1996), the A.M. Turing Award (1974), and the National Medal of Science (1979).