Legendary Mathematician Donald Knuth

LEGENDARY DONALD KNUTH Computers can be quite useful for a Mathematician. This is exemplified by the legendary Mathematician and computer Scientist Don Knuth (pronounced KANNOOTH) Donald Knuth is a Mathematician who is more popular among computer Science students for his contributions to sementics and algorithms. For mathematicians anybody who uses the “Tex” environment for typing mathematical manuscripts owes a lot to Knuth.(I should mention that there is a lot of geometry in action when one looks at the way “fonts” are designed) As a student Knuth showed great enthusiasm for puzzles and problems. When confectionary manufacturer Ziegler organised a competition to form maximum number of words using the letters from the phrase 'Ziegler's Giant Bar', Don Knuth was the obvious winner making up 4500 words while the judges of the competition had only 2500. While at Case Institute of Technology, Cleveland Ohio, Don Knuth already started using the IBM-150. He was analysing graphs of various surfaces described in several dimensions. He also used the IBM-150 for analysing the performance of his Basket ball team. So IBM started using his name and picture to advertise the capabilities of the machine. His brilliance was such that his college awarded him an MS degree while he had just cleared his BS. Don Knuth wrote a Research paper while still a student “On methods of constructing sets of mutually orthogonal latin Squares”. He thus entered the Caltech with a distinction of having research experience well in advance. He joined Caltech in 1960 and he got his PhD in 1963 working on the thesis “ On Finite Semifields and Projective Planes” and joined Burroughs Corporation. He had a fascination for numerical analysis. He computed euler's constant correct to 1271 decimal places. He was also interested in evaluation of polynomials using computers. In computer Science he is famous for his work on compiler design and syntax development, He is the joint collaborator for the Knuth-Morris-Pratl string searching algorithm. He also contributed to the LR(k) grammer and syntax semantics in VLSI design. He thus earned the titles : “Euler of Computer Science” and “The Father of Analysis of Algorithms” His book “Art of Computer Programming” was named among the 12 best Physical Sciences Monographs along with Dirac's Quantum Mechanics and Einstein's Relativity. He also wrote a Science fiction novel “ Surreal Numbers”. He is currently Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.