Education
Knuth had a difficult time choosing physics over music as his major at Case Institute of Technology (now part of Case Western Reserve University). He also joined Beta Nu Chapter of the Theta Chi fraternity. While studying physics at the Case Institute of Technology, Knuth was introduced to the IBM 650, one of the early mainframes. After reading the computer's manual, Knuth decided to rewrite the assembly and compiler code for the machine used in his school, because he believed he could do it better. In 1958, Knuth constructed a program based on the value of each player that could help his school basketball team win the league. This was so novel a proposition at the time that it got picked up and published by Newsweek and also covered by Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News. Knuth was one of the founding editors of the Engineering and Science Review, which won a national award as best technical magazine in 1959. He then switched from physics to mathematics, and in 1960 he received his bachelor of science degree, simultaneously receiving his master of science degree by a special award of the faculty who considered his work outstanding.
In 1963, he earned a Ph.D. in mathematics (advisor: Marshall Hall) from the California Institute of Technology, and began to work there as associate professor and began work on The Art of Computer Programming. He had initially accepted a commission to write a book on compilers which would later become the multi-volume The Art of Computer Programming. This work was originally planned to be a single book, and then planned as a six- and then seven-volume series. In 1968, just before he published the first volume, Knuth accepted a job working on problems for the National Security Agency (NSA) through their FFRDC the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) Communications Research Division situated at the time on the Princeton campus in the Von Neumann building as stated in his cumulae vitae. It seems likely Knuth left the position and joined the faculty of Stanford University because of his political beliefs and the volatile political climate on the campus at the time.
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