Artifact Details

Title

Knuth, Donald oral history

Catalog Number

102658053

Type

Document

Description

In this wide-ranging interview conducted by Edward Feigenbaum, Donald Knuth talks about the progression of his life and career. Topics include his family background and early interest in music, physics and mathematics, his first exposure to programming, finding a mentor, and writing a doctoral thesis. He describes how "The Art of Computer Programming" became "the story of my life", and why it was put on hold for the TeX and METAFONT projects. He also talks about personal work habits, programming style, analysis of algorithms, the influence of religion in his life, and his advice to the next generation of scientists.

Date

2007-03-14; 2007-03-21

Contributor

Feigenbaum, Edward, Interviewer
Knuth, Donald E., Interviewee
Rosenshteyn, Yan, Cameraperson

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, California

Extent

73 p.

Category

Transcription

Subject

Fellow Award Honoree; Knuth, Donald; IBM 650 (Computer); Combinatorial analysis--Data processing; Combinatorics; Analysis of algorithms; The Art of Computer Programming; Stanford University; TeX; METAFONT; Religion; Literate programming

Collection Title

Oral history collection

Lot Number

X3926.2007