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Computer scientists can be a quirky bunch, one of the many reasons that we love them. We are especially tickled to visit today’s innovator in our Inspiring STEM Across America series, who not only wrote the book on computer programming but is also an accomplished organist, composer, and humorist. But before we introduce him, we have some important stops to take along our route from Orange, California to Stanford.
Namely, it’s Disney time! Our route takes us through Los Angeles and into Disney territory. In fact, the sheer number of amusement parks north of LA is surprising; if we had time, we would visit them all! We’ll do what we can and try not to lose our Munchies (a tasty mix of Sun Chips, Doritos, Rold Gold Pretzels and Cheetos) on the rollercoasters.
After a stint with the Mouse, we have some family friendly Kidz Bop pop music blaring through the speakers as we pull up to Stanford University, hoping to catch professor emeritus Donald Ervin Knuth. He still frequents the campus to give the occasional free-to-the-public lecture in a series he calls “Computer Musings.” 
We highly recommend you check out Knuth’s amusing professional page where you will learn all about why he doesn’t use email, his thoughts on programming languages, and how to take part in a lucrative challenge to find typos in his books.
Donald Knuth (pronounced Ka-NOOTH) grew up in Wisconsin, where he showed an early penchant for analysis, winning prizes for his elementary school and creating a news-worthy rating system for his high school’s basketball team. After receiving his doctorate at Caltech, Knuth began the creation of a book on computer programming languages. Thorough as always, Knuth decided he needed to create a more coherent theory than what was available at the time. This became the multi-volume The Art of Computer Programming. Moving on to Stanford later in his career and considering this book his life’s work, Knuth retired early from Stanford to devote more time to updating and editing these volumes.
During his tenure, Knuth spent time working in cryptography to aid the Princeton branch of the National Security Agency. He has also contributed to the fields of linguistics, digital typesetting, and religious literature.
He wrote Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About, where he published his MIT lectures God and Computer Science. An accomplished organist and composer, Knuth composed Fantasia Apocalyptica for the organ based on the book of Revelation from the Bible.
While creating new digital typefaces, Knuth created a new methodology called “literate programming” to encourage programmers to think of programs as works of literature. About this, he has said, “Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.”
We could be here all day talking about the contributions Donald Knuth has made to the world, and we didn’t even mention them all here. What we appreciate about him is that he gives his all to each project, displaying the kind of passion for life and work that we here at KMC strive to have as well. And he does so with good humor and pluck. He is truly a Rennaissance Man and is assuredly one of the most interesting of our leaders Inspiring STEM Across America.
KMC Controls is an independent and family-owned manufacturer of turn-key solutions based in New Paris, Indiana. For the last fifty years, KMC Controls has remained dedicated to the American ideals of quality and innovation, focusing on intuitive solutions created by responsive and supportive people.
Consider us your Building Geniuses® who are building geniuses, one blog post at a time! KMC is dedicated to inspiring interest in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Join us for the next three weeks as we learn more about Inspiring STEM Across America.
References:
https://academicinfluence.com/people
https://time.com/collection/time100-ai/#innovators
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/future-tech-awards-2021-future-50
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth