Donald Ervin
Knuth
Year
1988
Subject
Computer and Cognitive Science
Award
Franklin
Affiliation
Stanford University
Citation
For theory of computation and typeface design.
Donald Knuth was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1938. He earned a B.S. from the Case Institute of Technology in 1960 and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 1963. After completing his degree, Dr. Knuth was a member of the Caltech faculty until 1968, when he took at position as Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University.
Dr. Knuth completed a five-volume set on typography describing the TeX document compiler and the METAFONT character compiler, both portable, non-trivial software in his WEB programming system. He is writing The Art of Computer Programming, a summary of basic computer science techniques. Dr. Knuth was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1979.
Information as of 1998