Honorary degree citation - Donald Knuth

By: Tien D. Bui, June 1991

Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you Donald Ervin Knuth, world renowned computer scientist whose brilliant ideas and practices have been influencing the whole discipline of Computer Science for the past 25 years.

Dr. Knuth has contributed extensively and innovatively to the field of computers and computing. He has written numerous authoritative papers and textbooks in computer science. He is a pioneer in the area of computer programming with major contributions to the design and analysis of algorithms, computer languages and structured programming. He is one of the principal scientists who has contributed to the transition of programming to a disciplined science. His first three volumes of “The Art of Computer Programming” have set new standards in computer science and have provided the major impetus in forming the discipline. His work on METAFONT and TEX has touched upon almost every scientific endeavour.

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he received his doctorate from California Institute of Technology in 1963. He was the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University from 1977 to 1989. Since 1990, he is the Professor of the Art of Computer Programming. During his distinguished career, he has been awarded numerous prestigious honours and awards such as the Turing Award of the Association for Computing Machinery, the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Steele prize of the American Mathematical Society, and the Computer Pioneer Award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science and a member of the National Academy of Engineering an honour very few scientists have achieved.

It is indeed a great honour for Concordia University to bestow on Dr. Knuth an honorary doctorate and join 13 other universities, including Oxford, Brown, Stony Brook and Université de Paris, who have done so in the past.

Mr. Chancellor, it is a privilege, and one of the great pleasures of my academic life, to present to you, on behalf of the Senate, and by the authority of the Board of Governors, Donald Ervin Knuth, so that you may confer on him the degree of Doctor of laws, honoris causa.