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Home , Donald Knuth

STANFORD, 94305

COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT Telephone: .15-321-2300

November 30, 1976

Professor W. B. Carnochan Dean of Graduate Studies Stanford University Stanford, California 94305

Dear Dean Carnochan:

I am honored to nominate Professor Donald E. Knuth for the Texas Instruments Foundation Founders' Prize. The enclosed material supports the nomination.

If Stanford decides to nominate Professor Knuth for the Prize competition, I will immediately revise and extend the case for the submission. Thus, please consider the enclosed material as a "penultimate draft," for your use in guiding Stanford's decision. To the outside world Don Knuth is "Mr. Science" - the great young genius of this young science. I hope that Stanford will choose to nominate him for the Prize.

Sincerely yours, h^-6 Edward A. Feigenbaum Professor and Chairman

EAF:cet enclosures ■=^>^^S^A^SHE-"- " —es.

—' ' oiicction Coninu ttne , — please type Name of Nominee "—" "~~ ~" — Donald Position or Title . E. Knuth Address Professor of — Stanford University i 1063 Vernier Place Telephone Number Stanford, CA 94305 415/493-7875 I

[ ] Physical Sciences [ J Health Sciences [ ] Management Sciences Engineering [designate specific discipline] LxJ| j J

[1] Include summary of the desrrinti^ ofr 7" " the achievement record attached '»«*«»" qUaHyi„g ,„ „,, ,„„._

M Include factual statement by resized authority In the attached field

(3) Include nominator's statement of expected oath of H, attached

M Include breadth of person's activity in other areas, if any . attached

W U, three peer referees uho may serve to evaiuate this nominee in his '"^Sy^^^ primary field y " ~ caiifornia■ 2. Dr. Ronald L. Graham R.n t„i v . 07974 ~~ _ University"-v-ibuy, — — Pittsburgh,Pitt.h h PA»■ 15213

Oame of Nominator Edward A. Feigenbaum Position or Title Professor and Chairman Address Department of Computer Science Stanford University Polya Hall 215 Telephone Stanford University Number Stanford, CA 94305 415/497-4079 November 30. 1976 Sl^^ure AALAAmLlM^iJa^; 7 " " — "

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' (1) Summary of Description of Achievement Record

An excellent summary of Knuth's record of achievements is provided in a letter from Professor Richard Karp of the University of California, Berkeley. The letter is included in the material, and for purposes of the summary is excerpted below:

"Throughout his career, Knuth has been guided by a vision of computer programming as a creative activity combining elements of both art and science. His writing and his personal example have conveyed this vision to a generation of young computer scientists. His books on the art of computer programming are the most scholarly works yet produced in com- puter science. They have played an essential role in codifying the fundamental knowledge at the core of computer programming, and hence in establishing computer science as a discipline. His research has had a germinal effect on the development of the analysis of as a subdiscipline of computer programming. He pioneered the systematic investigation of data structures. He carried out the first adequate analyses of many important algorithms for arithmetic, search, storage organization and pattern matching. He is a virtuoso at asymptotic com- binatorial analysis, and has demonstrated the applicability of that body of technique to the . His invention of LR(k) grammars spurred the practical application of the theory of parsing and compiling, and his work on the formal semantics of programming languages has had lasting importance. He has contributed to pure mathematics, most recently through his monograph on the . He has conducted scholarly investigations of the early history of programming languages. He has written a charming mathematical novelette called "Surreal Numbers." And, besides all this, he is possibly the world's best computer programmer." (2) Factual Statement by Edward A. Feigenbaum, Professor and Chairman of Computer Science, Stanford University

The histories of the great sciences are marked by -- indeed even identified with -- the emergence of key individuals of immense creativity, energy, and vision. Their efforts give scientific shape and robustness to otherwise inchoate bodies of prescientific "lore;" establish paradigms for generations of future scientists; and simultaneously score the rule by which "great" will be measured in the future of the science. In the young Computer Science, one of the few individuals universally acclaimed to be such a key figure is Professor Donald Knuth of Stanford University.

The immensity of Knuth's vision and talent are most evident in his books The Art of Programming. In this series, of which three volumes have already appeared, Knuth attempts no less than the organization, systematization, and refinement of the immense body of scientific and prescientific material that exists on the programming of digital .

The Art of Programming has been reviewed in over 50 places. It has been translated into Rumanian, Russian, Japanese, and Spanish. The first three volumes include over 2000 pages and over 2000 exercises, with 385 pages devoted entirely to answers for these exercises!

What is most outstanding about these books is that Knuth has taken a vast literature in which a variety of concepts and techniques has been developed to a wide variety of levels and has brought everything up to essentially the same level of development. Thus, when a Topic A has been developed in respect X and a Topic B has been developed in respect V, Knuth has developed Topic Am respect V and B in X. His books, therefore, include a considerable amount of new research -- emerging from the systematization and not published elsewhere. The nature and extent of this scholarly synthesis is unparalleled in the existing literature of Computer Science. Excerpts from important re- views of Knuth's volumes are included as an appendix to this statement. The excerpt from the Scientific American review of Volume 3 says it all, and is therefore quoted directly here: "A stupendous achievement. The series is destined to be one of the great mathematical works of this century." (Scien- tific American, February 1973) .

In addition to this work on the systematization of the programming art, Knuth is a of remarkable versatility and scope who conducts a variety of research projects in the analysis and construction of algorithms and the theoretical and empirical understanding of programs using these algorithms. He, virtually singlehandedly , opened up as an exciting and respectable field of scientific study the mathematical analysis of algorithms. His work on al- gorithms and associated data structures has deep theoretical roots in combina- torial and . To illustrate the scope of Knuth's current research work, a sample of recent activities is given below: ...on efficiency of algorithms: a generalizationof Dijkstra's famous for shortest paths.

...on average case analysis of algorithms: average behavior of set-merging algorithms (with Schonhage and Yao) .

...Computational Complexity and worst-case analysis of algorithms: Knuth proves that the new Boyer-Moore algorithm for pattern-matching in strings is linear in the worst case, and some related theorems about the complexity of this problem.

...on programming languages: (with Trabb Pardo) for the Los Alamos Symposium on the History of Computing, Knuth has written a superb historical discussion of the first two dozen high-level languages for computers, based in large part on hitherto unpublished documents collected from many parts of the world.

For his achievements, Professor Knuth has received the highest honors his profession can bestow. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was honored with the highest award for scientific achievement given by the Association for Computing Machinery, the A. M. . Much earlier, he had received this society's award for outstanding contributions of a young computer scientist (under 30 years), the Grace M. Hopper Award. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972-73. "A stupendous achievement. The series is destined to be one of the great mathematical works of this century." , reviewing Volume 3, see Scientific American, February 1973.

"There can be no doubt as to how profound an effect Knuth's series, The Art of Computer Programming, has had on computer science. In the three published volumes the author has collected and organized what was a briar patch of techniques, algorithms, and theorems into a coherent discipline. He has devoted much time to searching for, inventing, and promoting proper terminology and notation." E. Reingold, feature review in American Scientist V. 62, n0. 5 (Sep/0ct. 1974), p. 594.

"One of the more important events to occur in the field of computers and information science has been the appearance of the first three volumes of The Art of Computer Programming by Donald E. Knuth (It) represents a degree of scholarship that is unsurpassed in the field of computer science and, indeed, ranks among the very finest of scientific textbooks... The treatment is often so engrossing that it is difficult to stop reading... The major strength of this book lies not with the amassing of a large number of algorithms, although the organization and coverage is superb, but with the analyses which accompany the algorithms." M. T. McClennan and Jack Minker in Mathematics of Computation, V. 28, n0. 128, Oct. 1974, pp. 1175-1180.

"Knuth has made a timely and great contribution. He has managed to provide organization of ideas where little existed before; he has provided many ideas which in essence are new... (The book) contains an incredible amount of information in terms of quantity and quality." M. G. Muller in Mathematical Reviews, V01.44, N0. 3, Sept. 1972, p. 655, review 3530.

"There are important books... (The author) has much to say and says it with a fine blend of humor, finesse, and scholarship... Of particular merit are the many historical notes... The real importance of Knuth's work is that it rep- resents a truly positive step towards eliminating the existing breach between and computer scientists." M. B. Wells in Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, V.79, no. 3 (May 1973), pp. 501-509.

"The level of these first three volumes has remained so high, and they have displayed so wide and deep a familiarity with the art of computer programming, that a sufficient 'review' of future volumes could almost be: 'Knuth, Volume n has been published.'" Data Processing Digest. (3) Expected Professional Path of the Nominee

It will take Professor Knuth at least a decade to complete volumes 4-7 of his series The Art of Computer Programming. The remaining volumes each promise to be major treatments of previously unorganized material. Volume 4 deals with the mushrooming field of "combinatorial algorithms," the study of methods for dealing efficiently with problems that otherwise would involve so many cases they could never be solved even on the fastest computers. An enormous amount of work has been dene on such problems by workers in engineering and operations research as well as in various branches of mathematics and com- puter science, and the synthesis of these ideas Knuth is expected to provide is anxiously awaited. Volume 5 deals with sophisticated processing of input data into forms that a computer can readily manipulate. Volumes 6 and 7 will deal with more specialized topics (the theory of languages and the construction of algebraic ) . Knuth's current research is essentially to develop new approaches to algorithmic analysis via asymptotic methods. This is a synthesis of sophisticated tech- niques used in mathematical analysis, statistics, and combinatorial theory in connection with computer algorithms, and it promises to resolve several of the most outstanding problems remaining in the quantitative study of computer algorithms. (4) Breadth of Interests of the Nominee

Besides his leading contributions to computer science and pure mathematics, Knuth has been active in many other areas, and he can always be expected to do the unexpected. For example, the first "technical publication" listed on his curriculum vitae was in Mad Magazine. He has a 16-rank pipe organ in his home, one of the largest and finest such instruments in any home in the country; pictures of this organ recently appeared in dozens of news- papers across the country. As a member of the American Guild of Organists, he plays frequently in public, occasionally does original compositions and arrangements, and is an assistant organist at his church. He and his wife (who is a designer) have collaborated on dozens of artistic projects, which are circulated mostly among their close friends, but are extremely innovative and of high quality; examples are their handmade Christmas cards, some ceramics, visual experiments with colors and random dots, a muffler which conceals two hot-water bottles, batiks in Escheresque patterns, a poster of J. S. Bach with lines of his music in place of computer lines, etc. Knuth has several patents for hardware ideas incorporated in Burroughs computers. He has recently published what seems to be the world's only mathematical novel, a book Surreal Numbers that has received wide acclaim. At Stanford he teaches technical writing as well as computer science and is principal investigator of four research projects. STANFORD UNIVERSITY CALIFORNIA 94305

SCIENCE DEPARTMENT Telephone : nk-m&m November 29, 1976

Professor Edward A. Feigenbaum Chairman, Computer Science Department Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305

Dear Professor Feigenbaum:

I am pleased to write in support of Donald Knuth's candidacy for the Texas Instrument Corporation Founder's Award. Throughout his career, Knuth has been guided by a vision of computer programming as a creative activity combining elements of both art and science. His writing and his personal example have conveyed this vision to a generation of young computer scientists. His books on the art of computer programming are the most scholarly works yet produced in computer science. They have played an essential role in codifying the funda- mental knowledge at the core of computer programming, and hence in establishing computer science as a discipline. His research has had a germinal effect on the development of the analysis of algorithms as a subdiscipline of computer pro- gramming. He pioneered the systematic investigation of data structures. He carried out the first adequate analyses of many important algorithms for arith- metic, search, storage organization and pattern matching. He is a virtuoso at asymptotic combinatorial analysis, and has demonstrated the applicability of that body of technique to the analysis of algorithms. His invention of LR(k) grammars spurred the practical application of the theory of parsing and compiling, and his work on the formal semantics of programming languages has had lasting importance. He has contributed to pure mathematics, most recently through his monograph on the stable marriage problem. He has conducted scholarly investiga- tions of the early history of programming languages. He has written a charming mathematical novelette called "Surreal Numbers." And, besides all this, he is possibly the world's best computer programmer.

One could make a massive case for Knuth based on the normal criteria for scien- tific achievement, but to do so would be missing an even more important . What makes Knuth unique is his pivotal role in the development of studies of algorithms and programming from an ad hoc, prescientific stage to its present status as a well defined discipline worthy to engage our best scientific minds.

Very truly yours, /Y\. \Co^/cef Richard M. Karp Professor of Computer Science University of California Berkeley RMK:cet

STANFORD,

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