Donald Knuth

He’s 87 years old. His plan for the weekend is to borrow 25 machines from Stanford to compute how many knight’s tours exist in a chess board. It will take more than a full day of computing time, so he waits monitoring the different terminal windows.

He wants to add this topic to his book The Art of Computer Programming. Addison-Wesley commissioned him to write it. That was the year 1962. “It’s a book about compilers, but I got to bring up some basics,” he says. He’s been writing the introduction of his compiler book for 63 years. There’s no clear end in sight.

He has been at it for so long that the printing industry changed while he was doing it—shifting from physical to digital typesetting. Proper mathematical notation was lost in the transition, so he built his own typesetting system: TeX. Nearly every modern academic paper rests on it. “Well, now that everything’s broken, you have to rethink everything”, he says.

The man shows up for the interview in a simple T-shirt, in an empty room, with terrible audio. He stammers. He forgets things. It’s a bit painful to watch. And yet he shines. He lights up when he speaks about problems that he loves: the knight’s tour, or figuring out a mathematical model to represent the letter S. “I’m trying to cut, but there’s so much good stuff”, he says, smiling as he talks about his book. He’s uncomfortable being treated as a legend and constantly reminds that every achievement attributed to him has been a collaboration.

Donald Knuth is not just a living piece of computer science history—he’s an example of how to live a life:

• Commit to your task.
• Always do your best.
• Figure your own way through problems.
• Give your solutions to others.
  
• Don’t take yourself too seriously.
  

What an inspiration!