Ivan Sutherland is considered by many to be the creator of Computer Graphics.  Starting with his Ph.D. thesis, Sketchpad, Sutherland has contributed numerous ideas to the study of Computer Graphics and Computer Interaction.  Ivan introduced concepts such as 3-D computer modeling, visual simulations, computer aided design (CAD) and virtual reality.

Education

• Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1963;
• M.S. EE, California Institute of Technology, 1960;
• B.S. EE, Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), 1959;
• Honorary MA, Harvard University, 1966;

Academia Experience

• Professor, Harvard University, 1966;
• Professor, University of Utah, 1968;
• Chairman of Computer Science Department, California Institute of Technology, 1974;

Professional Experience

• Electrical Engineer and First Lieutenant, National Security Agency, 1963;
• Researcher, Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1964;
• Co-Founder, Evans and Sutherland, 1968;
• Researcher, RAND Corporation, 1974
• Vice-President and Technical Director, Sutherland, Sproull and Associates, 1980;
• Vice-President and Sun Fellow, Sun Microsystems, 1990;

    His first computer experience was with a computer called SIMON.  It was a relay-based computer with six words of two bit memory.  Its 12 bits of memory permitted SIMON to add up to 15.  Sutherland's first big computer program was to make SIMON divide. To make division possible, he added a conditional stop to SIMON's instruction set.  This program was a great accomplishment, it was the longest program ever written for SIMON, a total of eight pages of paper tape.  Sutherland was one of the few high school students to have ever written a computer program in that era.  He went on the study at Carnegie Mellon University with a full scholarship.  He earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and then went on to earn a M.S. also in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

    For his Ph.D., Sutherland went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology were he developed his thesis, "Sketchpad: A Man-machine Graphical Communications System.", the first Graphical User Interface.  Sketchpad was a unique program developed for the TX-2 computer, a unique computer in itself.  In early 1960s, computers would run "batches" of jobs and were not interactive.  The TX-2 was an "on-line" computer used to investigate the use of Surface Barrier transistors for digital circuits.  It included a nine inch CRT and a lightpen which first gave Sutherland his idea.  He imagined that one should be able to draw on the computer.  Sketchpad was able to do just this, creating highly precise drawings.  It also introduced important innovations such as memory structures to store objects and the ability to zoom in and out.
Ivan Sutherland at the console of the TX-2 - Sketchpad Project, MIT, 1963
 

    Upon graduation from Gradute school, Sutherland was enlisted in the Army were he worked at the National Security Agency (NSA) as an Electrical Engineer.  The following year, Sutherland was transferred to the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) were he commisioned research projects in important comnputing concepts such as timesharing and artificial intelligence.

    Sutherland continued on into academia were he took a poistion as Professor at Harvard University.  Two years later, he became a Professor at the Univeristy of Utah, building the school's reputation as the mecca for computer graphics.  In 1976, Sutherland became the head of the Computer Science department at Caltech.  There he helped make integrated circuited design a subject in academia.  Until then, circuit design was considered too mundane or too difficult to study.  By introducing circuit design, Sutherland helped pave the way for advances in chip design, which in turn propelled the chip "explosion" in Silicon Valley.
 
 

Dr. Ivan Sutherland in the classroom, California Institute of Technology, 1976

    Over the years, Ivan Sutherland has recieved many awards for his contributions toward computer science.

• Computerworld Smithsonian Award, 1996
• AM Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery, 1988
• First Zworykin Award, National Academy of Engineering, 1972
• Member, National Academy of Sciences, since 1978
• Member, National Academy of Engineering, since 1973
• Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
•  Fellow, Association for Computing Machinery

Quotes

"A display connected to a digital computer gives us a chance to gain familiarty with concepts not realizable in the physical world.  It is a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland."

"I just need to figure out how things work."

"It's very satisfying to take a problem we thought difficult and find a simple solution. The best solutions are always simple."

References

"The Franklin Institute Certificates of Merit - Dr. Ivan E. Sutherland" http://sln.fi.edu/tfi/exhibits/sutherland.html

"Ivan Sutherland"  http://www.realtime-info.be/encyc/techno/terms/31/48.html