Biography
Ivan Edward Sutherland (born May 16, 1938) [ 6 ] is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer , widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. [ 7 ] His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subject at the University of Utah in the 1970s was pioneering in the field. Sutherland, Evans, and their students from that era developed several foundations of modern computer graphics. He received the 1988 ACM Turing Award for the invention of the Sketchpad , an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal computers, and his contributions to computer graphics. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering , as well as the National Academy of Sciences among many other major awards. In 2012, he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology for "pioneering achievements in the development of computer graphics and interactive interfaces". [ 8 ] [ 9 ] Sutherland's father was from New Zealand; his mother, Anne Sutherland, was from Scotland. His family moved to Wilmette, Illinois , then Scarsdale, New York , for his father's career. Bert Sutherland , also a computer scientist, was his elder brother. [ 10 ] Ivan Sutherland earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Carnegie Institute of Technology , his master's degree from Caltech , and his Ph.D. from MIT in electrical engineering in 1963. [ 11 ] [ 2 ] Sutherland invented Sketchpad in 1962 while at MIT. Claude Shannon signed on to supervise Sutherland's computer drawing thesis. [ 2 ] Among others on his thesis committee were Marvin Minsky and Steven Coons . Sketchpad was an innovative program that influenced alternative forms of interaction with computers. Sketchpad could accept constraints and specified relationships among segments and arcs, including the diameter of arcs. It could draw both horizontal and vertical lines and combine them into figures and shapes. Figures could be copied, mov Fields: Computer science, Computer graphics Education: Carnegie Mellon University BS California Institute of Technology MS Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD Award Citation: Turing Award (1988) Computer Pioneer Award (1985) IEEE John von Neumann Medal (1998) ACM Fellow (1994) Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1978) [ 1 ] Kyoto Prize [ when? ]
About the Turing Award
The ACM A.M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science and is colloquially known as the "Nobel Prize of Computing."
Quick Facts
- Award: ACM A.M. Turing Award
- Added: 2026-02-07
- Source: Wikipedia
- Prize: $1,000,000 (USD)
- Presented by: ACM
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Notable Winners
- Donald Knuth (1974)
- Tim Berners-Lee (2016)
- Geoffrey Hinton (2018)
- Yoshua Bengio (2018)
- Yann LeCun (2018)