How Donald Knut went to school and entered university

Original author: Donald Knuth
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What was Knut's first publication, what an obedient nerd he was at school, and why he loved music more than math.

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I graduated from the Lutheran High School in Milwaukee (Milwaukee Lutheran High School,) in 1956. We didn’t have “world-class” teachers, but they were all interested in our education.

After that, I continued to study mathematics, although it did not interest me much during my studies at school, because when I tried to ask the teacher, he did not know the answer. I could solve something wrong and the teacher did not notice the error. So why did I have to go to math? Moreover, at that time I liked music and physics more. My physics and chemistry teacher was a great person who wrote his own book. He himself developed the course of experiments in chemistry, thereby admiring me. He also interested me in physics, despite the fact that I devoted most of my free time to music.

Publishing support - Edison , which develops a billing system for providers , and also develops software for tax reporting via the Internet .

Interests in High School (5/97)




I played the piano well, sang in the choir, and even belonged to a group. In a band called Milwaukee All - City Band (or just a Symphony Band), I played the saxophone and trumpet. I wrote and arranged music for other bands.

At that time, I enjoyed reading Mad Magazine and Roger Price, who also wrote the book Milton and the Rhinoceros. Deciding to create a caricature of Milton and the Rhino, I created Peter Prokofiev and the Wolf. At that time I did not know about copyrights, and in general I did not understand this. So, I took the words from the work “Milton and the Rhinoceros”, put on the music and got this twenty-minute “something” for speaking at school. I gave “this” to the director who lost my work, and I did not see it again. So I can’t say whether it was something good or not, but it was.

How I was a “Nerd” in High School (6/97)




In high school, I founded my newspaper. I was the editor-in-chief and during my last year I often sat on Monday night, finishing the newspaper until 7 in the morning. We also did not have professional printing equipment, so we used a screen-printing machine. It was outdated, used greasy ink, but the reason I used it is simple: one of these machines was in my house. My father worked as an architect, printing drawings on it, and made up music for local choirs. We also had an electronic typewriter so that I could print texts at home. Many reporters worked with my newspaper and, moreover, I created various crosswords, puzzles and the like.

So, I was closely associated with writing in high school. I worked with Yearbook and other publications. My friends and I wrote different plays for various circles at school. It was a fun time. But at the same time, I looked like a car. I studied, absorbed knowledge, wrote tests 100%, without relaxing and not thinking about really important things in life.

I was a very obedient child, they told me to go to school, I went to school, they told me to study, I studied. I enjoyed writing some projects, but, for example, I didn’t read, unless I was told to read a certain book. However, sometimes I read what is interesting to me, although, as far as I remember, I was a very slow reader. I remember how I decided to read The Dark House by Charles Dickens. There were about 60 chapters, but I read it for so long that I had to write two reports, instead of one, and I never read it. In general, I got to good literature, which I would read with pleasure, only to thirty years.

In high school, I was a pretty successful "machine." At that time, grades were set on a 100-point scale, summing up homework and passing exams. My average mark was 97.5, I set a new school record. So I can safely be called a nerd at that time.

Essential System of Weights and Measures (8/97)




As I mentioned, in the last academic year, while working at Mad Magazine, I was working on a project that was presented to The Academy of Sciences in Wisconsin (The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences) and the Westinghouse Science Talent Search (now Intel Science Talent Search), and was called "The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures." Potrzebie (Polish “necessity”) is a rather popular word in Mad Magazine and I decided to develop a system that would be more perfect than metric. It was based on the thickness of Mad Magazine # 26, which equated to 1 "potrzebie of length". 1 kilo potrzebie of length equaled thousands of magazines, and 1 fershlugginer potrzebie equaled millions of magazines. We had units of time, weight, everything that is in the usual metric system, and she received a promotion in Science Talent Search, and also received a prize in Wisconsin from the Academy of Sciences. Mad Magazine later published it, paying me $ 25. This was my first technical publication, so it is listed in my biography as publication number 1. It was later published in the reprint of Mad Magazine and I used it as the basis for the work of student government bodies in college. And she failed miserably, because they did not elect me.

I also posted a sequel to Mad Magazine in a crossword puzzle format. The idea to create such a crossword puzzle was given to me by the image of Alfred E. Newman, a stupid boy with a missing tooth. And when I looked at his teeth, they seemed to me like black and white squares, resembling a crossword puzzle. And I created my crossword puzzle with a special slang characteristic of Mad Magazine. But they did not publish it, although I still have a copy of it. Later, we decided to create Selected Papers on Fun and Games, which reprinted not only The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures, but also everything that Mad Magazine refused to print so readers could decide for themselves whether they liked this material. , or not. So yes, I like to look at things both non-standard and everyday.

Why did I chooseCase Institute of Technology (10/97)



As I said, in high school, math was pretty confusing for me. When I went to Case (the slang name Case Institute of Technology), I met a math teacher who was also versed in physics and chemistry, which aroused great respect for me. He was really smart, and it was pretty hard for him to please. He was never impressed by my calculations and this upset me. I never met a teacher whom I could not impress, so I began to study mathematics much more diligently. However, he had a good sense of humor. By the way, his name was Paul Gunther. After two years of study, I was able to impress him, which made me very happy, but the main thing is that I became interested in mathematics. However, I think I need to go back a little.

When choosing a college, I went for several scholarships. One of them belonged to the Valparaiso University in Indiana, associated with the Lutheran Church, specializing in music. Another scholarship belonged to Case University in Cleveland with a focus on physics. My mother's family was originally from Cleveland, and she said that this University had high standards and few of her friends were allowed to study there. I understood that studying there would be a real test for me, where I would have to study hard, while at the University of Valparaiso in Indiana I would study music, which is much simpler. And I decided to challenge myself and go to Case. Case had a special freshman group called the Honors Group, which was taught by faculty rectors,

About Knut’s life at the university in the next article.

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List of 97 Donald Knuth videos
Youtube playlist

1. Family history
2. Learning to read and school
3. My mother
4. My parents' finances
5. Interests in high school
6. Being a nerd of nerds at high school
7. My sense of humor
8. The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures
9. Feeling the need to prove myself
10. Why did I choose Case Institute of Technology
11. University life: my basketball management system
12. University life: the fraternity system
13. Meeting my wife Jill
14. Bible study at university and a time of personal challenge
15. Extra-curricular activities at Case
16. Taking graduate classes at Case
17. Physics, welding, astronomy and mathematics
18. My maths teacher at Case and a difficult problem
19. My interest in graphs and my first experience of a computer
20. How I got interested in programming
21. Learning how to program on the IBM 650
22. Writing a tic-tac-toe program
23. Learning about Symbolic Optimum Assembly programs
24. The Internal Translator
25. Adding more features to RUNCIBLE
26. Wanting to be a teacher and why I chose to go to Caltech
27. Writing a compiler for the Burroughs Corporation
28. Working for the Burroughs Corporation
29. Burroughs Corporation
30. My interest in context-free languages
31. Getting my PhD and the problem of symmetric block designs with ...
32. Finding a solution to an open problem about projective planes
33. Inception of The Art of Computer Programming
34. 1967: a turbulent year
35. Work on attribute grammars and the Knuth-Bendix Algorithm
36. Being creative in the forest
37. A new field: analysis of algorithms
38. The Art of Computer Programming: underestimating the size of the ...
39. The successful first release of The Art of Computer Programming
40.Inspiration to write Surreal Numbers
41. Writing Surreal Numbers in a hotel room in Oslo
42. Finishing the Surreal Numbers
43. The emergence of computer science as an academic subject
44. I want to do computer science instead of arguing for it
45. A year doing National Service in Princeton
46. ​​Moving to Stanford and wondering whether I'd made the right choice
47. Designing the house in Stanford
48. Volume Three of The Art of Computer Programming
49. Working on Volume Four of The Art of Computer Programming
50 . Poor quality typesetting on the second edition of my book
51. Deciding to make my own typesetting program
52. Working on my typesetting program
53. Mathematical formula for letter shapes
54. Research into the history of typography
55. Working on my letters and problems with the S
56. Figuring out how to typeset and the problem with specifications
57. Working on TeX
58. Why the designer and the implementer of a program should be the ...
59. Converting Volume Two to TeX
60. Writing a users' manual for TeX
61. Giving the Gibbs lecture on my typography work
62. Developing Metafont and TeX
63. Why I chose not to retain any rights to TeX and transcribed it to ...
64. Tuning up my fonts and getting funding for TeX
65. Problems with Volume Two
66.Literate programming
67. Re-writing TeX using the feedback I received
68. The importance of stability for TeX
69. LaTeX and ConTeXt
70. A summary of the TeX project
71. A year in Boston
72. Writing a book about the Bible
73. The most beautiful 3:16 in the world
74. Chess master playing at Adobe Systems
75. Giving a lecture series on science and religion at MIT
76. Back to work at Stanford and taking early retirement
77. Taking up swimming to help me cope with stress
78. My graduate students and my 64th birthday
79. My class on Concrete Mathematics
80. Writing a book on my Concrete Mathematics class
81.Updating Volumes One to Three of The Art of Computer Programming
82. Getting started on Volume Four of “The Art of Computer ...
83. Two final major research projects
84. My love of writing and a lucky life
85. Coping with cancer
86 Honorary doctorates
87. The importance of awards and the Kyoto Prize
88. Pipe organ music is one of the great pleasures of life
89. The pipe organ in my living room
90. Playing the organs
91. An international symposium on algorithms in the Soviet Union
92. The Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm
93. My advice to young people
94. My children: John
95. My children: Jenny
96. Working on a series of books of my collected papers
97. Why I chose analysis of algorithms as a subject

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