Donald Knuth

Trivia

Knuth is a famous programmer known for his geek humor:

Related Topics:
Famous programmer - Geek

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• He pays a finder's fee of $2.56 for any typos/mistakes discovered in his books, because "256 pennies is one hexadecimal dollar". (His bounty for errata in 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated, is, however, $3.16).
• Version numbers of his T_EX software approach the transcendental number π, that is versions increment in the style 3, 3.1, 3.14 and so on. Version numbers of Metafont approach the number e similarly.
• He once warned users of his software, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." (source)
• All appendixes in the Computers and Typesetting series have titles that begin with the letter identifying the appendix.
• TAOCP v3 (1973) has the index entry "Royalties, use of, 405". Page 405 has no explicit mention of royalties, but does contain a diagram of an "organ-pipe arrangement" in Figure 2. Apparently the purchase of the pipe organ in his home (see Personal below) was financed by royalties from TAOCP. (source)

In addition to his writings on computer science, Knuth is also the author of 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated (1991), ISBN 0895792524, in which he attempts to examine the Bible by a process of stratified random sampling, namely an analysis of chapter 3, verse 16 of each book. Each verse is accompanied by a rendering in calligraphic art, contributed by a group of calligraphers under the leadership of Hermann Zapf.

Related Topics:
1991 - Stratified random sampling - Hermann Zapf

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Knuth published his first "scientific" article in a school magazine in 1957 under the title "Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures." In it, he defined the fundamental unit of length as the thickness of MAD magazine #26, and named the fundamental unit of force "whatmeworry". MAD magazine bought the article and published it in the June 1957 issue.

Related Topics:
1957 - Potrzebie - Fundamental unit - Length - ''MAD'' magazine - Force

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