Editing Donald Knuth (section)

==Biography==
===Early life===
Donald Knuth was born in [[Milwaukee]], [[Wisconsin]], to Ervin Henry Knuth and Louise Marie Bohning.<ref name="MacTutor">{{MacTutor |id=Knuth |date=October 2015 |access-date=2021-07-02}}</ref> He describes his heritage as "Midwestern Lutheran German".{{r|Feigenbaum 2007|p=66}} His father owned a small printing business and taught bookkeeping.<ref name="Raskin2013">{{cite book |author=Molly Knight Raskin |title=No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin--the Genius who Transformed the Internet |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Pi79AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA61 |year=2013 |publisher=Da Capo Press, Incorporated |isbn=978-0-306-82166-0 |pages=61–62}}</ref> While a student at [[Milwaukee Lutheran High School]], Knuth thought of ingenious ways to solve problems. For example, in eighth grade, he entered a contest to find the number of words that the letters in "Ziegler's Giant Bar" could be rearranged to create; the judges had identified 2,500 such words. With time gained away from school due to a fake stomachache, Knuth used an unabridged dictionary and determined whether each dictionary entry could be formed using the letters in the phrase. He identified over 4,500 words, winning the contest.<ref name="Feigenbaum 2007">{{cite web |last1=Feigenbaum |first1=Edward|author-link1=Edward Feigenbaum |title=Oral History of Donald Knuth |url=https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Knuth_Don_1/Knuth_Don.oral_history.2007.102658053_all.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081209120854/http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Knuth_Don_1/Knuth_Don.oral_history.2007.102658053_all.pdf |archive-date=2008-12-09 |url-status=live |website=Computer History Museum |access-date=17 September 2020 |date=2007}}</ref>{{rp|3}} As prizes, the school received a new television and enough candy bars for all of his schoolmates to eat.<ref>{{Cite book |year=1998 |title=Out of their minds: the lives and discoveries of 15 great computer scientists |first1=Dennis Elliott |last1=Shasha |first2=Cathy A |last2=Lazere |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-0-387-98269-4 |page=90 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-0tDZX3z-8UC&pg=PA90}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | year=2011 | title=Selected Papers on Fun and Games | first1=Donald | last1=Knuth | publisher=Center for the Study of Language and Information—CSLI Lecture Notes, no. 192 | page=400 | isbn=978-1-57586-584-3}}</ref>

===Education===
Knuth received a scholarship in physics to the Case Institute of Technology (now part of [[Case Western Reserve University]]) in [[Cleveland]], Ohio, enrolling in 1956.<ref name="ency2020">{{cite web |title=Donald E. Knuth |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/science-and-technology/computers-and-computing-biographies/donald-e-knuth |website=Encyclopedia.com |access-date=17 September 2020}}</ref> He also joined the Beta Nu Chapter of the [[Theta Chi fraternity]]. While studying physics at Case, Knuth was introduced to the [[IBM 650]], an early commercial [[computer]]. After reading the computer's manual, Knuth decided to rewrite the [[assembly code|assembly]] and [[compiler]] code for the machine used in his school because he believed he could do it better.<ref name="Koshy2004">{{Cite book |first=Thomas |last=Koshy |title=Discrete mathematics with applications |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=90KApidK5NwC&pg=PA244 |access-date=July 30, 2011 |year=2004 |publisher=Academic Press |isbn=978-0-12-421180-3 |page=244 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121112175255/http://books.google.com/books?id=90KApidK5NwC&pg=PA244 |archive-date=November 12, 2012 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1958, Knuth created a program to help his school's basketball team win its games.<ref>{{cite web |title=Donald Knuth, basketball and computers in sport |first=Keith |last=Lyons |url=https://keithlyons.me/blog/2018/09/25/donald-knuth-basketball-and-computers-in-sport/ |work=Clyde Street Archive |date=September 25, 2018 |access-date=August 16, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190816141158/https://keithlyons.me/blog/2018/09/25/donald-knuth-basketball-and-computers-in-sport/ |archive-date=August 16, 2019 |url-status=dead }}</ref> He assigned "values" to players in order to gauge their probability of scoring points, a novel approach that ''[[Newsweek]]'' and ''[[CBS Evening News]]'' later reported on.<ref name= "Koshy2004"/>

Knuth was one of the founding editors of the Case Institute's ''Engineering and Science Review'', which won a national award as best technical magazine in 1959.<ref name="BetaNu-Case-edu">{{Cite web |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160904030655/http://greeklife.case.edu/org/thetachi/Our_History |url=http://greeklife.case.edu/org/thetachi/Our_History |title=Beta Nu of Theta Chi, History of Beta Nu Chapter |publisher=[[CWRU]] |archive-date=September 4, 2016 |access-date=April 15, 2019 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="BetaNu-ThetaChi-org">{{Cite web |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191221062600/https://www.thetachi.org/beta-nu |url=https://www.thetachi.org/beta-nu |title=Beta Nu, Theta Chi |publisher=[[Theta Chi]] |archive-date=December 21, 2019 |access-date=December 21, 2019 |url-status=dead }}</ref> He then switched from physics to mathematics, and received two degrees from Case in 1960:<ref name="ency2020" /> his Bachelor of Science, and simultaneously a master of science by a special award of the faculty, who considered his work exceptionally outstanding.<ref name = "Turing Award">{{cite web |last=Walden |first=David |url=https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/knuth_1013846.cfm |title=Donald E. Knuth - A.M. Turing Award Laureate |access-date=December 14, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191017231352/http://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/knuth_1013846.cfm |archive-date=October 17, 2019 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name = "Koshy2004" />

At the end of his senior year at Case in 1960, Knuth proposed to [[Burroughs Corporation]] to write an [[ALGOL]] compiler for the B205 for $5,500. The proposal was accepted and he worked on the ALGOL compiler between graduating from Case and going to [[California Institute of Technology|Caltech]]. {{r|Feigenbaum 2007|p=66}}<ref name="Waychoff 1979">{{cite web |last1=Waychoff |first1=Richard |title=Stories About the B5000 and People Who Were There |url= https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2016/06/102724640-05-01-acc.pdf |website=Computer History Museum}}</ref>{{rp|7}}

In 1963, with mathematician [[Marshall Hall (mathematician)|Marshall Hall]] as his adviser,<ref name=mathgene/> he earned a PhD in mathematics from the [[California Institute of Technology]], with a thesis titled ''Finite Semifields and Projective Planes''.<ref>{{Cite thesis |publisher=[[California Institute of Technology]] |date=1963 |url=https://thesis.library.caltech.edu/2441/1/Knuth_de_1963.pdf |title=Finite Semifields and Projective Planes |first=Donald Ervin |last=Knuth |type=PhD}}</ref>

===Early work===
In 1963, after receiving his PhD, Knuth joined Caltech's faculty as an assistant professor.<ref name=vitae/>

While at Caltech and after the success of the Burroughs B205 ALGOL compiler, he became consultant to Burroughs Corporation, joining the Product Planning Department. At Caltech he was operating as a mathematician but at Burroughs as a programmer working with the people he considered to have written the best software at the time in the ALGOL compiler for the B220 computer (successor to the B205).{{r|Feigenbaum 2007|p=9}}

Knuth was offered a $100,000 contract to write compilers at Green Tree Corporation but turned it down making a decision not to optimize income and continued at Caltech and Burroughs.
He received a National Science Foundation Fellowship and Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship but they had the condition that you could not do anything else but study as a graduate student so he would not be able to continue as a consultant to Burroughs. He chose to turn down the fellowships and continued with Burroughs.{{r|Feigenbaum 2007|p=12}}
In summer 1962, he wrote a FORTRAN compiler for Univac, but considered that “I sold my soul to the devil” to write a FORTRAN compiler.{{r|Feigenbaum 2007|p=15}}

After graduating, Knuth returned to Burroughs in June 1961 but did not tell them he had graduated with a master's degree, rather than the expected bachelor's degree. Impressed by the ALGOL syntax chart, symbol table, recursive-descent approach and the separation of the scanning, parsing and emitting functions of the compiler Knuth suggested an extension to the symbol table that one symbol could stand for a string of symbols. This became the basis of the DEFINE in Burroughs ALGOL, which has since been adopted by other languages. However, some really disliked the idea and wanted DEFINE removed. The last person to think it was a terrible idea was [[Edsger W. Dijkstra|Edsger Dijkstra]] on a visit to Burroughs.{{r|Waychoff 1979|p=17}}

Knuth worked on simulation languages at Burroughs producing SOL ‘Simulation Oriented Language’, an improvement on the state-of-the-art, co-designed with J. McNeeley. He attended a conference in Norway in May, 1967 organised by the people who invented the Simula language. Knuth influenced Burroughs to use Simula.<ref name="Dahl 2001">{{cite web |last1=Dahl |first1=Ole-Johan |title=The Birth of Object Orientation: the Simula Languages |url= https://www.mn.uio.no/ifi/english/about/ole-johan-dahl/bibliography/the-birth-of-object-orientation-the-simula-languages.pdf}}</ref><ref name="Biography">{{cite web |title=Biography |url= https://www.informs.org/Explore/History-of-O.R.-Excellence/Biographical-Profiles/Knuth-Donald/}}</ref>
Knuth had a long association with Burroughs as a consultant from 1960 to 1968 until his move into more academic work at Stanford in 1969.<ref name="Nance">{{cite web |title=Interview with Richard Nance 2013 |url= https://d.lib.ncsu.edu/computer-simulation/videos/donald-e-knuth-interviewed-by-richard-e-nance-knuth/}}</ref><ref name="Knuth CV">{{cite web |last1=Dahl |first1=Ole-Johan |title=The Birth of Object Orientation: the Simula Languages |url= https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/vita.html}}</ref>

In 1962, Knuth accepted a commission from Addison-Wesley to write a book on computer [[programming language]] [[compiler]]s. While working on this project, he decided that he could not adequately treat the topic without first developing a fundamental theory of computer programming, which became ''[[The Art of Computer Programming]]''. He originally planned to publish this as a single book, but as he developed his outline for the book, he concluded that he required six volumes, and then seven, to thoroughly cover the subject. He published the first volume in 1968.<ref name=TAOCP>{{Cite web |last=Knuth |first=Donald Ervin |title=The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP) |url=https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190803223145/https://www.cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html |archive-date=2019-08-03 |date=2019-08-03 |access-date=2018-02-06 }}</ref>

Just before publishing the first volume of ''The Art of Computer Programming'', Knuth left Caltech to accept employment with the [[Institute for Defense Analyses#Center for Communications and Computing|Institute for Defense Analyses' Communications Research Division]],<ref name="Institute for Defense Analyses">{{cite web | title=Institute for Defense Analyses | website=INFORMS | date=2021-08-27 | url=https://www.informs.org/Explore/History-of-O.R.-Excellence/Non-Academic-Institutions/Institute-for-Defense-Analyses | access-date=2024-01-08}}</ref> then situated on the [[Princeton University|Princeton]] campus, which was performing mathematical research in [[cryptography]] to support the [[National Security Agency]].

In 1967, Knuth attended a [[Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics]] conference and someone asked what he did. At the time, computer science was partitioned into [[numerical analysis]], [[artificial intelligence]], and [[programming language theory|programming languages]]. Based on his study and ''The Art of Computer Programming'' book, Knuth decided the next time someone asked he would say, "Analysis of algorithms".<ref name="quanta_magazine">{{cite web |title=The Computer Scientist Who Can't Stop Telling Stories |url=https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientist-donald-knuth-cant-stop-telling-stories-20200416 |first=Susan |last=D'Agostino |work=[[Quanta Magazine]] |date=2020-04-16 |access-date=2020-04-19 }}</ref>

In 1969, Knuth left his position at Princeton to join the [[Stanford University]] faculty,<ref name="Computer Science department timeline">{{cite web | title=Timeline | website=Computer Science @ Stanford - Spotlight at Stanford | date=2019-06-21 | url=https://exhibits.stanford.edu/cs/about/timeline | access-date=2024-01-08}}</ref> where he became [[Fletcher R. Jones|Fletcher Jones]] Professor of Computer Science in 1977. He became Professor of The Art of Computer Programming in 1990, and has been emeritus since 1993.<ref name="homepage">{{Cite web |url=https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/ |title=Home page |last=Knuth |first=Donald Ervin |publisher=[[Stanford University]] |access-date=2005-03-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191127223728/https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/ |archive-date=2019-11-27 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Donald Knuth |url=https://profiles.stanford.edu/donald-knuth |work=Profiles |publisher=Stanford University |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160612181314/https://profiles.stanford.edu/donald-knuth |archive-date=2016-06-12 |url-status=dead |access-date=2020-08-24 }}</ref>