He is the author of The Art of Computer Programming, one of the first and most highly respected textbooks of the computer science field, and the creator of the TeX and Metafont typesetting systems.
He pioneered the concept of literate programming. He is considered a famous programmer, known for his geek humor: as examples, he pays a finder's fee of $2.56 for any typos/mistakes discovered in his books because "256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar". Version numbers of his TeX software approach pi, that is versions increment in the style 3, 3.1, 3.14 and so on, version numbers of Metafont approach e similarly; he once warned users of his software, "Beware of the above code. I have only proven it correct, not tested it." (source (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/faq.html))
He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 1963.
In 1968 he became a member of the faculty of Stanford University where he is currently Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming. He has received various awards including the Turing Award, the National Medal of Science, the John von Neumann Medal and the Kyoto Prize.
In 2003 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
External links
- The Stanford home page of Donald Knuth (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/)