Donald Knuth about his happy life, his death and the last two projects / Edison Blog

“I realized that I was ready to die as soon as I finished the book.”



I am still working on the “Art of Programming,” but I found the time to work on two large projects. I worked on one in the late 80s, and on another in the early 90s. These were monographs.

The first project was called Axioms and Shells, I studied interesting problems in geometry — convex geometry — and I continued to work on it while I was in Singapore, releasing “3:16” in print. It was a small book, about 100 pages.

Then I began to study random graphs - an amazing phenomenon when something like the Big Bang occurs: start with points that are not connected by anything, then select 2 random points and connect them, and so on; as soon as you cross the number of connections, about half the points, suddenly almost all points always turn out to be connected. It is called "giant component . "

Publication support is provided by Edison , which has developed a system for calculating road traffic at intersections and a taxi order exchange application .

Two final major research projects (83/97)

I studied this problem with Boris Pittel, who visited me in the late 80s, and we got some preliminary results that are interesting from a mathematical point of view. I wrote an article and realized that even more results can be obtained from these experiments: the deeper I studied this topic, the more interesting the system appeared. And it all turned out to be ... this system developed into the fact that I began to study not only the giant component, but wrote a research article, a huge article. She took a whole magazine.



I also had three co-authors: Boris Pittel, whom I already mentioned, Svante Johnson and Thomas Luchak from Poland. We all continued to find more facts, and pushed each other to the next step in the study of this phenomenon. And it was like writing two doctoral dissertations at the end of my career, two monographs, one on the topic of Axioms and Shells, and the other on a gigantic component. It was my swan song, after which I said: “Okay, well, I have already done a lot here, and I will leave all other topics to other people, if I can not solve the problem in a day. Or in an hour. "

But sometimes after an hour of work, I understand that maybe in an hour I can solve the problem. And so, now, if I don’t know how to solve a new problem, I pass it on to someone else, saying: “Don't you think this is a cool thing?”, And just let me have fun with the solution to the problem.


Axioms and hulls


The birth of the giant component

My love of writing and a lucky life (84/97)

As you understand from my story, I am passionate about writing books. I like to share ideas with other people. I think that the books I wrote are about those amazing things that are too good not to share them, and I wanted other people to share my joy when reading books. And it just so happened that I now have more than 20 published books, and there are so many that I doubt whether there is such a person in the world who would read more than half.

And sometimes I think it would be terrible if there were 10 people on earth who looked like me, because we simply did not have time to read each other's books. And still I ... you know, behind every written book, there is a story, behind every written article.

I don’t understand this “publish or die”, because I never wrote all these articles just because I needed it for a career or something. I wrote because I wanted to, you know, I thought it was a cool idea that others should learn. One guy asked me two or three weeks ago, he was doing a project for school, he needed to shoot a video with several people whom he barely knew and ask them the following question: “If you could change only one thing in your life and do “to another, what would you choose?”

And, you know, I was never asked such a question, and after 5 minutes of thought I gave up. I mean, yes, maybe I am becoming forgetful with age, but I could not think of any moment in my life that I would regret. I'm just too lucky, I was constantly on the crest of a wave. I mean, I was born at the right time, computers just started to appear, and I had skills that helped me get comfortable with computers, write programs. And if I were born 10 years earlier or 10 years later, then everything would be different.

I started working with computers when they began to appear, and the problems were much simpler. I could easily solve them. The easiest ones fell on us, but now we have to solve those that remained - the most difficult ones - or look at problems from completely different angles, they are, of course, very exciting, for example, robotics and other areas that were open, because fundamental , the simplest problems have given a new level of discovery, unresolved issues. But I can’t even imagine that I could be even happier or, although many of the things that I did throughout my life were not popular, I just can’t think of anything that I would like to do differently. So, it was very difficult for me to answer that guy’s question.

Coping with cancer (85/97)

Last year, I found out that I had cancer and, fortunately, it was found out at an early stage, so that could not stop me from writing "The Art of Programming." But at the end of last year, I did not know how bad everything was. I just want to tell you a little about this, because it can happen to everyone ... sooner or later everyone dies, but we never know what will happen and everyone will have to face such a situation someday.

I just want to share how it affected me last year. I understand that I am now at such an age when I have to attend the funeral of people whom I knew well, for example, my colleague Bob Floyd died a couple of years ago and I, you know, then thought about how to cope with death. After all, this is inevitable, and I realized that I was ready to die as soon as I finished the book, but not a week earlier. It would be terrible if I could not finish the project. And then, when I finished the book, that's all, I again reconciled with this thought.

After the death of my father in the 70s, I first encountered this and had to decide how I should relate to death. I remember that it took me about a month before I could again not think about death literally every hour and stop asking questions. I thought a lot about it at that time, and it helped to get used to this idea. And now, I know many cases when someone dies, and we say: “Oh, how so?”, But this is a good end, because a week ago they could meet with their children or friends, put things in order, and, well, they had time to take stock, and everything was so good that one can only dream of it.

The reason I'm talking about this is prostate cancer, which I discovered last year, and the operation was scheduled for December. At the same time, I was invited to make an important presentation at a conference in Europe dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Swiss Higher Technical School in Zurich, this is like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but in Europe. And I was the keynote speaker, and all the reporters interviewed, etc., of course, I didn’t say anything about the upcoming operation, and, you know, the presentation went well, everyone was passionate about the same as me, I have there were no enemies, I was on top.

Even if I died then in December during that operation, it would be that happy ending that I knew from others. Moreover, several essays were written in my speech, in Zurich I received an honorary doctorate, it was already 31, even more than that of Ronald Reagan, well, of course, still not as much as Bob Hope, but for such a direction as programming is incredible.

I achieved everything I dreamed about, but did not finish the “Art of Programming”. And then, after Switzerland, I flew back, spent a week with my children and grandchildren, you know, we had a wonderful time together, and even if I had died then, that would also be the perfect end. I considered it as, “I had a full life, and if I die during the operation, then okay, it will just be a little unexpected, but not something that is worth upsetting about; and if everything goes well, then I’ll have another chance to do something useful, but it’s more likely to be a gift, and you should not take it for granted. ” Do you understand what I mean?

And I'm not just talking about it now, I really thought so then. When I was in the hospital, I did not think about what I would do when I got home, I thought: “Well, if I get home, then I’ll think about business.” And I was in the operating room for 4 or 5 hours, unconscious, and then suddenly I heard happy voices and people who said that everything went well. “So, wonderful, I'm still alive, and maybe I can move forward a little more.”

It is not so easy to recover from the operation, but everything went well, and here I am. Next month I will also start radiotherapy as a precaution, but the prognosis is pretty good. Every day, when I feel good, I perceive it as a gift that allows me to do what I can - to collect all the facts related to computers, and write a book that people who are far from science could understand.

Read more

• Donald Knuth: I sat on the back desks and bullied jokes, and the teachers humbled themselves and didn’t beat their asses often (1,2,3,7 / 97)
  
• Donald Knuth: “My Advice to the Young” (93/97) and “Feeling the need to assert oneself” (9/97)
  
• “Surreal numbers”: I worked for six days, and rested on the seventh (40,41,42 / 97)
  
• Donald Knuth: How The Art of Programming Was Created (33.38.39 / 97)
  
• Donald Knuth: about his wife, kisses, “Specific Mathematics” and a look at teaching at the university
• Donald Knuth: When will the fourth volume finally be released
• Donald Knuth: How I spent the summer with a computer, not with girls (19,20,21,22 / 97)
• Donald Knuth: about assembler, translator and competent programming