Editing Donald Knuth (section)

{{short description|American computer scientist and mathematician (born 1938)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2015}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name              = Donald Knuth
| birth_name        = Donald Ervin Knuth
| image             = Donald Ervin Knuth (cropped).jpg
| caption           = Knuth in 2011
| birth_date        = {{birth date and age|1938|1|10}}
| birth_place       = [[Milwaukee|Milwaukee, Wisconsin]], U.S.
| spouse            = Nancy Jill Carter
| children          = 2
| field             = {{ublist|[[Mathematics]]|[[Computer science]]}}
| work_institutions = [[Stanford University]]<br/>[[University of Oslo]]
| education         = {{ublist|[[Case Western Reserve University]] ([[Bachelor of Science|BS]], [[Master of Science|MS]])|[[California Institute of Technology]] ([[Doctor of Philosophy|PhD]])}}
| doctoral_advisor  = [[Marshall Hall (mathematician)|Marshall Hall, Jr.]]<ref name=mathgene>{{MathGenealogy|id=10416}}</ref>
| doctoral_students = {{Plainlist|
* [[Leonidas J. Guibas]]
* [[Michael Fredman]]
* [[Scott Kim]]
* [[Vaughan Pratt]]
* [[Robert Sedgewick (computer scientist)|Robert Sedgewick]]
* [[Jeffrey Vitter]]
* [[Andrei Broder]]<ref name=mathgene/>}}
| thesis_title      = Finite Semifields and Projective Planes
| thesis_year       = 1963
| thesis_url        = https://thesis.library.caltech.edu/2441/1/Knuth_de_1963.pdf
| known_for         = {{collapsible list|title={{nobold|''See list''}}|{{ublist|''[[The Art of Computer Programming]]'', |[[TeX]], [[METAFONT]], |[[Computer Modern]], |[[Knuth's up-arrow notation]], |[[Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithm]], ||[[Knuth–Bendix completion algorithm]], |[[MMIX]], |[[Robinson–Schensted–Knuth correspondence]], [[LR parser]], |[[Literate programming]]}}}}
| prizes            = {{collapsible list|title={{nobold|''See list''}}|{{Plainlist|
<!-- only awards that are notable enough for their own wikipedia article-->
* [[Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education|SIGCSE Outstanding Contribution]] (1986)
* [[Grace Murray Hopper Award]] (1971)
* [[Turing Award]] (1974)
* [[Member of the National Academy of Sciences]] (1975)
* [[National Medal of Science]] (1979)
* [[John von Neumann Medal]] (1995)
* [[Harvey Prize]] (1995)
* [[Kyoto Prize]] (1996)
* [[Foreign Member of the Royal Society]] (2003)<ref name=formemrs>{{cite web |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151117113154/https://royalsociety.org/people/donald-knuth-11764/ |archive-date=2015-11-17 |url=https://royalsociety.org/people/donald-knuth-11764/ |publisher=[[Royal Society]] |location=London |title=Professor Donald Knuth ForMemRS}}</ref>
* [[Faraday Medal]] (2011)
* [[BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award]] (2010)
* [[Turing Lecture]] (2011)
* [[Flajolet Lecture Prize|Flajolet Lecture]] (2014)}}}}
| website           = {{URL|https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth}}
}}
'''Donald Ervin Knuth''' ({{IPAc-en|k|ə|ˈ|n|uː|θ}}<ref name="faq"/> {{respell|kə|NOOTH|'}}; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is a [[professor emeritus]] at [[Stanford University]]. He is the 1974 recipient of the [[Acm Turing award|ACM Turing Award]], informally considered the [[Nobel Prize]] of computer science.<ref name = "Turing Award"/> Knuth has been called the "father of the [[analysis of algorithms]]".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Karp |first=Richard M. |author-link=Richard M. Karp |date=February 1986 |doi=10.1145/5657.5658 |issue=2 |journal=Communications of the ACM |pages=98–109 |title=Combinatorics, Complexity, and Randomness |volume=29|doi-access=free }}</ref>

Knuth is the author of the multi-volume work ''[[The Art of Computer Programming]]''. He contributed to the development of the rigorous analysis of the [[computational complexity]] of algorithms and systematized formal mathematical techniques for it. In the process, he also popularized the [[Big O notation|asymptotic notation]]. In addition to fundamental contributions in several branches of [[theoretical computer science]], Knuth is the creator of the [[TeX]] computer typesetting system, the related [[METAFONT]] font definition language and rendering system, and the [[Computer Modern]] family of typefaces.

As a writer and scholar, Knuth created the [[WEB]] and [[CWEB]] computer programming systems designed to encourage and facilitate [[literate programming]], and designed the [[MIX (abstract machine)|MIX]]/[[MMIX]] [[instruction set|instruction set architectures]]. He strongly opposes the granting of [[software patent]]s, and has expressed [[#Opinion_on_software_patents|his opinion]] to the [[United States Patent and Trademark Office]] and [[European Patent Organisation]].