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Donald Ervin Knuth is born
January 10, 1938 (age 79)
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S. -
Knuth published his first "scientific" article in a school magazine in 1957 under the title "The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures."
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In 1958, Knuth created a program to help his school's basketball team win their games. He assigned "values" to players in order to gauge their probability of getting points, a novel approach that Newsweek and CBS Evening News later reported on.
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Knuth was one of the founding editors of the Engineering and Science Review, which won a national award as best technical magazine in 1959.
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He then switched from physics to mathematics, and in 1960 he received his bachelor of science degree, simultaneously being given a master of science degree by a special award of the faculty who considered his work exceptionally outstanding.
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Donlald Knuth married Nancy Jill Carter on 24 June 1961, while he was a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology. They have two children, John Martin Knuth and Jennifer Sierra Knuth.
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In 1963, with mathematician Marshall Hall as his adviser, he earned a PhD in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology.
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As Knuth 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.
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In the 1970s, Knuth described computer science as "a totally new field with no real identity.
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In 1971, Knuth was the recipient of the first ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award.
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Knuth was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1975.
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Knuth's Chinese name is Gao Dena
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In his 1980 volume of The Art of Computer Programming, Knuth explains that he embraced his Chinese name because he wanted to be known by the growing numbers of computer programmers in China at the time.
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Knuth was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society (DFBCS) in 1980 in recognition of Knuth's contributions to the field of computer science.
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In 1989, his Chinese name was placed atop the Journal of Computer Science and Technology's header, which Knuth says "makes me feel close to all Chinese people although I cannot speak your language".
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In 1990 he was awarded the one-of-a-kind academic title of Professor of The Art of Computer Programming, which has since been revised to Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming.
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In 1992, he became an associate of the French Academy of Sciences.
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In 1995, Knuth wrote the foreword to the book A=B by Marko Petkovšek, Herbert Wilf and Doron Zeilberger.[20] Knuth is also an occasional contributor of language puzzles to Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics.
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Knuth, March 4, 2005
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In 2006, Knuth was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
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Knuth in front of statue St. Mesrop Mashtots, Matenadaran, Yerevan, Armenia, June 9, 2006
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Knuth had to stop sending real checks in 2008 due to bank fraud, and instead now gives each error finder a "certificate of deposit" from a publicly listed balance in his fictitious "Bank of San Serriffe".
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Knuth was elected as a Fellow (first class of Fellows) of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 2009 for his outstanding contributions to mathematics.
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Shustek, Russell, Alcorn, Knuth, Wozniak, Mathews, Allen, CHM 2011
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Knuth and Steve Wozniak, CHM 2011
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In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.
