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I met Knuth a few months ago helping my wife do portrait photography of him (I got to hold lighting/reflectors :) ), and got to chat with him on machine learnin

I met Knuth a few months ago helping my wife do portrait photography of him (I got to hold lighting/reflectors :) ), and got to chat with him on machine learning and other research computer science results. I was floored at the sheer amount of papers and author names he could recall on the fly, he had already read every citation I had. At his age, his mind is as sharp as a tack, and watching him code and demo some stuff to me, he was incredibly adept in his programming environment, far more productive than I would be. I really hope he can finish all of the volumes of his books, it will truly be a gift to humanity.

svat 7y ago
Thanks for sharing. That was great to hear, and like you I too hope for many more volumes coming out. Your comment reminded me of the following from Herbert Wilf, 2002: https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/website/dek.pdf https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/website/dek.pdf (which I believe even better after reading your comment): Here’s a little story of math at 35,000 feet. […] I wrote to Don and sent him a few more related results that Neil and I had gotten […]. As a result, I got a letter from him that I found to very moving indeed. Of course it was in his familiar pencilled scrawl, written at the bottom of the note that I had sent him. It began as follows: > > Dear Herb, I am writing this on an airplane while flying to Austin to celebrate Dijkstra’s 70th birthday. This whole subject is beautiful and still ripe for research (after more than 150 years of progress!), so I will tell you what I know about it (or can recall while on a plane) in hopes that it will be useful. > There followed four pages of tightly handwritten information that was a gold mine of the history of the sequence b(n) and related matters. It contained references to de Rham, Dijkstra, Carlitz, Neil Sloane, Stern (of Stern-Brocot trees fame), Eisenstein, Conway, Zagier, Schönhage, Hardy, Ramanujan, and so forth. It did not merely mention the names. It contained precise statements of the results of interest, of their relationship with the result of Calkin and myself and with each other. It contained a number of Don’s own observations about related questions, and had several conjectures, with background, to offer. > It was a letter, ladies and gentlemen, that was written by a man who very much loves his subject and the history of his subject, and who knows more about that than any five other human beings that you could name. His enthusiasm, his background knowledge, and his mathematical values, that impelled him to write such a letter under such conditions, can be taken as examples for the rest of us to aspire to.
- ignoramous 7y ago
  You might enjoy this news.yc discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18698651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18698651
Arnt 7y ago
I met him years ago and had the same reaction. Even when he was relaxed, his attention seemed perfectly focused. His general appearance looked awesome. I don't mean well-dressed, I mean that his eyes and facial expression made him seem to have a brain the size of a small galaxy.
jrib 7y ago
What is his programming environment like?
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  I have a feeling he uses Emacs: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/color-mode.el https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/color-mo... It's magical watching experienced developers who have used Emacs for several decades, the way they fly through is amazing. Edit: He has a page on emacs wiki too it seems. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DonaldKnuth https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DonaldKnuth
agumonkey 7y ago
actually, I'd be as interested in how he operates when coding as his future texts :)

svat 7y ago

Thanks for sharing. That was great to hear, and like you I too hope for many more volumes coming out. Your comment reminded me of the following from Herbert Wilf, 2002: https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/website/dek.pdf https://www.math.upenn.edu/~wilf/website/dek.pdf (which I believe even better after reading your comment): Here’s a little story of math at 35,000 feet. […] I wrote to Don and sent him a few more related results that Neil and I had gotten […]. As a result, I got a letter from him that I found to very moving indeed. Of course it was in his familiar pencilled scrawl, written at the bottom of the note that I had sent him. It began as follows: > > Dear Herb, I am writing this on an airplane while flying to Austin to celebrate Dijkstra’s 70th birthday. This whole subject is beautiful and still ripe for research (after more than 150 years of progress!), so I will tell you what I know about it (or can recall while on a plane) in hopes that it will be useful. > There followed four pages of tightly handwritten information that was a gold mine of the history of the sequence b(n) and related matters. It contained references to de Rham, Dijkstra, Carlitz, Neil Sloane, Stern (of Stern-Brocot trees fame), Eisenstein, Conway, Zagier, Schönhage, Hardy, Ramanujan, and so forth. It did not merely mention the names. It contained precise statements of the results of interest, of their relationship with the result of Calkin and myself and with each other. It contained a number of Don’s own observations about related questions, and had several conjectures, with background, to offer. > It was a letter, ladies and gentlemen, that was written by a man who very much loves his subject and the history of his subject, and who knows more about that than any five other human beings that you could name. His enthusiasm, his background knowledge, and his mathematical values, that impelled him to write such a letter under such conditions, can be taken as examples for the rest of us to aspire to.

ignoramous 7y ago
You might enjoy this news.yc discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18698651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18698651

Arnt 7y ago

I met him years ago and had the same reaction. Even when he was relaxed, his attention seemed perfectly focused. His general appearance looked awesome. I don't mean well-dressed, I mean that his eyes and facial expression made him seem to have a brain the size of a small galaxy.

jrib 7y ago

What is his programming environment like?

giancarlostoro 7y ago
I have a feeling he uses Emacs: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/color-mode.el https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/color-mo... It's magical watching experienced developers who have used Emacs for several decades, the way they fly through is amazing. Edit: He has a page on emacs wiki too it seems. https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DonaldKnuth https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DonaldKnuth

agumonkey 7y ago

actually, I'd be as interested in how he operates when coding as his future texts :)