Difference between revisions of "Ivan Sutherland"

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Ivan Sutherland

Ivan Sutherland is considered by many to be the creator of Computer Graphics. Starting with his Ph.D. thesis, Sketchpad, Sutherland has contributed numerous ideas to the study of Computer Graphics and Computer Interaction. Ivan introduced concepts such as 3-D computer modeling, visual simulations, computer aided design (CAD) and virtual reality.

Education

• Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1963;
• M.S. EE, California Institute of Technology, 1960;
• B.S. EE, Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), 1959;
• Honorary MA, Harvard University, 1966;

Academic Experience

• Professor, Harvard University, 1966;
• Professor, University of Utah, 1968;
• Chairman of Computer Science Department, California Institute of Technology, 1974;

Professional Experience

• Electrical Engineer and First Lieutenant, National Security Agency, 1963;
• Researcher, Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1964;
• Co-Founder, Evans and Sutherland, 1968;
• Researcher, RAND Corporation, 1974
• Vice-President and Technical Director, Sutherland, Sproull and Associates, 1980;
• Vice-President and Sun Fellow, Sun Microsystems, 1990;

Biography

Ivan Sutherland was born in Hartings, Nebraska in 1938. Sutherland was immersed in learning since he was young. His father, a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, and his mother, a teacher, led Sutherland to appreciate learning. His favorite subject in high school was geometry, saying that "... if I can picture possible solutions, I have a much better chance of finding the right one." Sutherland has always described himself a visual thinker, hence his interest in computer graphics

His first computer experience was with a computer called SIMON. It was a relay-based computer with six words of two bit memory. Its 12 bits of memory permitted SIMON to add up to 15. Sutherland's first big computer program was to make SIMON divide. To make division possible, he added a conditional stop to SIMON's instruction set. This program was a great accomplishment, it was the longest program ever written for SIMON, a total of eight pages of paper tape. Sutherland was one of the few high school students to have ever written a computer program in that era. He went on the study at Carnegie Mellon University with a full scholarship. He earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and then went on to earn a M.S. also in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

For his Ph.D., Sutherland went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology were he developed his thesis, "Sketchpad: A Man-machine Graphical Communications System.", the first Graphical User Interface. Sketchpad was a unique program developed for the TX-2 computer, a unique computer in itself. In early 1960s, computers would run "batches" of jobs and were not interactive. The TX-2 was an "on-line" computer used to investigate the use of Surface Barrier transistors for digital circuits. It included a nine inch CRT and a lightpen which first gave Sutherland his idea. He imagined that one should be able to draw on the computer. Sketchpad was able to do just this, creating highly precise drawings. It also introduced important innovations such as memory structures to store objects and the ability to zoom in and out. Ivan Sutherland at the console of the TX-2 - Ske

Source: Biography of a Luminary Dr. Ivan E. Sutherland