TUG Interview Corner |
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TUG has collected many interviews over the years. If you know of
others that would be useful to add here, or would like to do new
interviews, please see interview background
information below.
There are two basic ideas behind this list of interviews:
(a) technology is created by and evolves with use by people, and
the points of view and backgrounds of the people influence the
technology; (b) there are lots of people who are relatively new to
the TeX community and therefore do not know much about the people who
are already significant contributors to the community.
Contents: Donald Knuth—text
- Donald Knuth—audio/video
- Stanford TeX Project
- TUG Interview Corner
- TeX Community Blog interviews
- Other interviews, etc.
- Some TeX histories.
Donald Knuth—text
[#knuth]
- The Dawn of Rigour in the Art of Programming, an interview
and capsule biography in Bhāvanā, vol.7, no.1, January 2023.
- The Computer Scientist Who Can't Stop Telling Stories, an article
in Quanta magazine by Susan D'Agostino, April 16, 2020.
- Donald Knuth: Programming is like nothing else. Become friends with geeks,
a long interview in iDNES.cz; October 17, 2019.
- The Yoda of Silicon Valley, New York Times; December 17, 2018.
- International
Olympiad in Informatics: Roads to Algorithmic Thinking, an interview
for the 2017 special issue of the Olympiads in
Informatics journal.
- Maths
in Science—an interview with Don Knuth: ten questions and answers
about mathematics use in schooling and later (and optimal teeth brushing).
- Twenty
Questions for Donald Knuth: for the publication of the eBook
versions of TAOCP, questions for Knuth were collected from various
people, he answered them, and the “virtual Q&A” was posted
on the web.
- Don
Knuth and the Art of Computer Programming: The Interview, by Richard
Morris; June 11, 2013.
- The Essential Knuth, a booklet length interview of Knuth by
Edgar Daylight conducted November 23, 2012, Lonely Scholar Scientific
Books, Hevelee, Belgium, 2013; a review of this booklet appeared in
TUGboat, Vol.34
(2013), No.3. A second extended interview with Daylight was
published as Algorithmic Barriers Falling: P=NP? in 2014; a review was
published in TUGboat Vol.36 No.1.
- Want
a Happy Holiday? Spend it with Donald Knuth, a short paean to TAOCP
at holiday time, by John Traenkenschuh, December 24, 2012.
- 145 pages of “conversations” (i.e., an extended
interview) between Knuth and his publisher Dikran Karagueuzian in
Companion to the Papers of Donald Knuth, 2012. the topics covered
in this interview are listed in a review of the
book (TUGboat Vol.33 No.1).
- Brief bio
of Donald Knuth for the website of the recipients of the ACM's
A.M. Turing Award; 2012.
- June 2011
interview of Knuth by BCS editor Justin Richards.
- Donald
Knuth: Geek of the Week, a short interview with Richard Morris;
November 26, 2009.
- Peter Seibel's book, Coders at Work (2009), has
a chapter on Knuth: the
book's website.
- April 28,
2008 interview of Donald Knuth by Andrew Binstock for informIT.
- Oral History of Edward Feigenbaum, interviewed by Donald Knuth for
the Computer History
Museum, April 4 and May 2, 2007.
- Oral History of Donald Knuth, interviewed by Edward Feigenbaum for
the Computer History
Museum, March 14 and March 21, 2007.
-
Love at First Byte, Donald Knuth profile in Stanford Magazine
May/June 2006 issue.
- Interview with Donald
E. Knuth, interview conducted by Gianluca Pignalberi,
TUGboat, Vol.26 (2005), No.3, pp.183-185.
- Panel discussion with Hermann Zapf
and Donald Knuth, reported by Taco Hoekwater, EuroTeX 2005 proceedings.
- Donald Knuth: All Questions
Answered (University of Oslo, 30 August 2002), TUGboat,
Vol.23 (2002), No. 3/4, pp.249-361.
- An Interview with
Donald E. Knuth, conducted by Philip L. Frana, November 8, 2001, in
the Charles Babbage Institute Oral History collection.
- My collaboration with Don Knuth
and my design work, Hermann Zapf, TUGboat, Vol.22 (2001),
No.1/2, pp.26-30.
- Interview: Donald Knuth,
interview conducted by Raph Levien, TUGboat, Vol.21 (2000),
No.2, pp.103-110.
- Rewriting
the Bible in 0s and 1s, a profile of Donald Knuth by Steve Ditlea,
Technology Review, September/October 1999.
- The Art
of Don E. Knuth, a profile by Mark Wallace, Salon, September
16, 1999.
- Question & Answer Session with
Donald Knuth (U.K. TUG, Oxford, September 12, 1999), TUGboat, Vol.22
(2001), No.1/2, pp.15-19.
- A
Look Back: A 1996 Interview with Donald Knuth on The Art of Computer
Programming, originally published in Addison-Wesley's newsletter
Innovations.
- DDJ chats with one of the
world's leading computer scientists, Dr. Dobb's Journal,
April 1996.
- Questions and answers with Prof.
Donald E. Knuth (CSTUG, Charles University, Prague, March 1996),
TUGboat, Vol.17 (1996), No.4.
- Amsterdam, 13 March 1996 —
Knuth meets NTG members, TUGboat, Vol.17 (1996), No.4.
- Questions and answers with Prof.
Donald E. Knuth (TUG'95), TUGboat, Vol.17 (1996), No.1,
pp.7-22.
- Computer
Literacy Bookshops Interview, December 1993. Primarily about CWEB
and GraphBase.
- An interview with Donald Knuth,
November 1991, TUGboat, Vol.13 (1992) No.4, pp.419-424.
- Donald Knuth, Interviewed
by Donald J. Albers and Lynn A. Steen, Mathematical People:
Profiles and Interviews, Donald J. Albers and G. L. Alexanderson,
editors, Birkhauser, Boston, 1985, pp.182-203.
Donald Knuth—audio/video
[#knuthav]
General: Donald Knuth Lectures, 111 lectures digitized by the Stanford
Center for Professional Development and available through a youtube
playlist. Many of these are also individually listed below.
2024-01-16: A Very Bad Estimator, an interview with Knuth, on Numberphile.
2021-12-09: Omicron (the symbol) in Mathematics, from Numberphile. Video by
Tony Padilla; Knuth material starts around 5:14.
2021-10-27: Foundations of Computing: Donald Knuth,
Polylogues; Siobhan Roberts, interviewer.
2021-09-09: Programming, Algorithms, Hard Problems & the Game of Life,
Lex Fridman podcast.
2020-10-24: Homecoming Awards Ceremony, Case Western Reserve University;
Knuth's part starts at 38:00.
2020-10-16: ACM Turing Award Laureate interview, several videos extracted from the
Feigenbaum interview for the CHM.
2020-09-22: Dialogue: Robert Endre Tarjan/Donald Ervin Knuth, Virtual Heidelberg
Laureate Forum.
Rough transcript.
2020-06-02: Don Knuth, episode 2 of ACM ByteCast. Interviewer: Rashmi Mohan.
Show notes,
transcript.
2019-12-30: Donald Knuth: Algorithms, Complexity, Life, and The Art of Computer
Programming, produced by AI Podcast. Interviewer: Lex Fridman.
2019-10-08: Q&A session, part 1, and
part 2, at Masaryk University.
2018-11-04: The Pascal Lectures on Christianity and the University, University
of Waterloo:
Computer Science, the Bible, and Music;
Constraints as a source of inspiration;
Fantasia Apocalyptica.
2018-10-31: All Questions Answered, University of Waterloo.
2018-07-19: Don Knuth's early programs,
Computer History Museum, Palo Alto.
In this interview, DEK discusses some of his earliest efforts in computer
programming while showing related
program listings and manuals.
2018-05-08(-11): Donald Knuth: An Oral History.
Transcript.
Interviewer: Susan W. Schofield.
Published by the Stanford Historical Society.
2018-01-12: All questions answered, Luleå University of Technology.
2017-12-09: Donald E. Knuth lectures, digitized by the Stanford Center for
Professional Development. Includes “Experiments with Digital
Halftones”, “Mathematical Writing”, “CS144C
classroom lectures about disk storage and B-trees”, and
“Christmas tree lecture 2017”.
2017-07-18: Invitation to Knuth's organ composition Fantasia Apocalyptica,
by organist Jan Overduin (Fantasia
Apocalyptica web page.)
2017-06-24:
Computer Science as a Major Body of Accumulated Knowledge, part
of ACM's 50-year Turing Award jubilee celebration.
A brief talk followed by lots of Q&A.
2017-03-15: History of Stanford's computer science department, panel discussion.
2016-12-15: The 2016 Paris C. Kanellakis Memorial Lecture: Hamiltonian Paths in
Antiquity, at Brown University.
2016-09-21: 32 years of TeX and Metafont, at the San Francisco Public Library.
2016-06-27: Surreal Numbers (writing the first book), from Numberphile.
2016-02-04: Analysis of algorithms
(hi-res)
Historical re-enactment of inaugural lecture given on 1969-11-04 upon
becoming a Stanford professor.
2016-11: HLF
Portraits: Donald Ervin Knuth, Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation.
Interview by Marc Pachter, filmed by Peter Badge.
2015-11-04: All questions answered, University College Cork.
2015-06-17: A conversation with Donald Knuth, University of British Columbia.
2015-06-17: Constraint Based Composition, a talk at Stanford ccrma about his approach to composing his organ work Fantasia
Apocalyptica.
2014-12-30: Wrong Turn on the Dragon, from Numberphile.
2014-06-17: Computer Science: All questions answered, UPMC Campus Jussieu.
2014-06-16: Problems Philippe Would Have Liked (slides),
Flajolet Lecture at the 25th International Conference on Probabilistic,
Combinatorial and Asymptotic Methods for the Analysis of Algorithms.
2013-10-12: Receiving the third Dr. Peter Karow ward, ATypI (award
information).
2013-09-27: Let's Not Dumb Down the History of Computer Science, 2014 Kailath
lecture, in which he discusses how he wishes computer science history
was written.
2013-06-12: Donald Knuth: “Ich wurde als Geek geboren” [I was born
a geek]. Part of the Vienna Gödel Lecture 2013 visit, including an “all
questions answered” video.
2013-05-21: All questions answered, JKU Linz.
2013-05-16: All questions answered, Vienna Gödel Lecture, TU Wien.
2013-02-06: Donald E. Knuth, Ph.D., interview by Richard E. Nance.
2012-01-14: All questions answered, ETH Zurich.
2011-05-17: All questions answered, Stanford Engineering Hero Lecture.
2011-03-24: All questions answered, Google Tech Talk.
2010-06-30: An Earthshaking Announcement, lecture given at TUG 2010 in San Francisco
(paper).
2009-03-17: Interactions between faith and science, Authors@Google.
2009: Lecture about DEK, part 1 and
part 2,
by Leon Sterling.
2007-03-14: Donald Knuth Oral History part 1,
part 2 (2007-03-21).
Transcript. Interviewer: Edward Feigenbaum. Published by the
Computer History Museum.
2006-04: Web of Stories, series of 97 videos commissioned by the Peoples
Archive. Interviewer: Dikran Karagueuzian.
Transcript.
Some TeX-related and other selections:
- 44: “I want to do computer science instead of arguing for it”
- 50: Poor-quality typesetting of second edition
- 51: Deciding to make my own typesetting program
- 52: Working on my typesetting program
- 53: Mathematical formula for letter shapes
- 54: Research into the history of typography
- 55: Working on my letters and problems with the S
- 56: Figuring out how to typeset and the problem with specifications
- 57: Working on TeX
- 58: Why the designer and the implementer of a program should be the
same person.
- 59: Converting Volume Two to TeX
- 60: Writing a users manual for TeX
- 61: Giving the Gibbs lecture on my typography work
- 62: Developing Metafont and TeX
- 63: Why I chose not to retain any rights to TeX and transcribed it
to Pascal
- 64: Tuning up my fonts and getting funding for TeX
- 65: Problems with Volume Two
- 66: Literate programming
- 67: Re-writing TeX using the feedback I received
- 68: The importance of stability for TeX
- 69: LaTeX and ConTeXt
- 70: A summary of the TeX project
- 93: My advice to young people
- 96: Working on a series of books of my collected papers
2005-03: Donald Knuth, Founding Artist of Computer Science, audio interview
by David Kestenbaum, National Public Radio.
2001-11-08: Questions Answered, at the Computer History Museum.
2001-11: Interview at the Charles Babbage Institute by Philip Frana.
Transcript.
1982-07-28ff.: The internal details of TeX82, twelve sessions:
- Session 2, 1982-07-28
- Session 3, 1982-07-28
- Session 4, 1982-07-28
- Session 5, 1982-07-29
- Session 6, 1982-07-29
- Session 7, 1982-07-29
- Session 8, 1982-07-29
- Session 9, 1982-07-30
- Session 10, 1982-07-30
- Session 11, 1982-07-30
- Session 12, 1982-07-30
1981-03-02ff.: Advanced TeXarcana, five sessions:
1981-02-23ff.: TeX for beginners, five sessions:
1980-02-01: The Errors of TeX78. (The sound is not good in the first 2--3
minutes but it gets better.)
Participants in the Stanford TeX Project
[#stanfordtexproject]
In preparation for TUG 2010:
TeX's 25 anniversary, we expanded
our interview series to include Stanford students who worked with Don
Knuth to develop TeX and Metafont in the late 1970s and into the
mid-1980s. The TeX Project people we interviewed are:
All but one of the above people have a chapter in the commemorative book we
prepared for TUG2010. All of them, along with Knuth, participated in a
panel discussion during the
conference.
Interview Corner
[#corner]
These are the interviews conducted by Dave Walden. The list is
alphabetical by last name. The one or two activities listed for each
interviewee are meant as just a hint about each interviewee and
are accurate as of the date of the interview. We do not update the
interviews after they are published.
TUG published a book containing the
interviews through March 2009, with additional material. There is
a discount for TUG members.
A program generated the HTML for these interviews, based on the
system of m4 files described in our paper about this interviews project;
the same files produced the book.
A chronological list of interviews
is also available.
- Pavneet Arora (interview completed 2016-05-24):
Pavneet Arora has participated in TUG annual conferences since 2010 and is the local organizer of TUG 2016 in Toronto.
- Kaveh Bazargan and CV Radhakrishnan (interview completed 2006-09-21):
Kaveh Bazargan and CV Radhakrishnan use TeX extensively in their typesetting
business.
- Barbara Beeton (interview completed 2005-11-24):
Barbara Beeton has been editor of TUGboat for 22 years and a
member of the TUG Board since it was called the steering committee. She
also serves as a liaison for TeXnical issues between Donald Knuth and
the TeX community.
- Karl Berry (interview completed 2005-09-27):
Karl Berry has been a long-time board member of TUG, became TUG president in 2003, and was subsequently elected for
further terms. Among other projects, he is co-administrator of the
tug.org server, co-editor of TeX Live,
and a member of the TUGboat production
team.
- Javier Bezos (interview completed 2020-07-25):
Javier Bezos is the current maintainer and developer of Babel. Javier has also written or contributed to many other packages for print production.
- Duane Bibby (interview completed 2006-05-19):
Cartoonist Duane Bibby is well known for the lion illustrations used in numerous TeX books, starting with The
TeXbook, and by TeX user groups.
- Jon Breitenbucher (interview completed 2008-05-22):
Jon Breitenbucher is interested in the use of TeX in educational situations and is a member of the TUG board.
- Mimi Burbank (interview completed 2005-09-06):
Mimi Burbank (1941–2010) served as a member of the TUGboat
production team and and a member of the TUG board.
- David Carlisle (interview completed 2007-06-20):
David Carlisle is a member of the LaTeX team and deeply involved with issues of typesetting and displaying mathematics,
including being an Invited Expert on the W3C Math Working Group.
- Lance Carnes (interview completed 2004-12-13):
Lance Carnes founded Personal TeX, Inc., in 1985
and has been providing PCTeX ever since.
- Bart Childs (interview completed 2010-05-10):
Bart Childs was extensively involved in the early distribution of TeX and early governance of TUG.
- Jin-Hwan Cho (interview completed 2007-05-21):
Jin-Hwan Cho is the maintainer of the DVIPDFMx translator, and a leader in supporting and encouraging the use of TeX in
Korea.
- Malcolm Clark (interview completed 2011-02-09):
Malcolm Clark is a past president of TUG.
- John Culleton (interview completed 2006-12-02):
John Culleton uses TeX in his indexing and typesetting business. He also participates in various Internet-based
discussion groups related to printing and publishing where he is vocal
about using TeX for typesetting.
- Susan DeMeritt and Cheryl Ponchin (interview completed 2007-10-11):
Cheryl Ponchin and Susan DeMeritt are both members of the TUG Board of Directors (Sue is
secretary of the board), give workshops on LaTeX, and use TeX daily in
their technical typing work.
- Victor Eijkhout (interview completed 2005-03-21):
Victor Eijkhout is the author of the book TeX
by Topic and several LaTeX packages, a long-time participant on
comp.text.tex and various mailing lists, and was formerly associate
TUGboat editor for macros.
- Thomas Esser (interview completed 2006-06-05):
Thomas Esser created and maintained the popular teTeX distribution of TeX.
- Robin Fairbairns (interview completed 2005-02-16):
Robin Fairbairns maintains the TeX FAQ and the UK CTAN node. He is also a
member of the LaTeX Project
team.
- Jonathan Fine (interview completed 2008-12-14):
Jonathan Fine is a long time participant in the TeX community. He is current chair of the UK TeX Users Group and is
employed supporting TeX at the Open University.
- Ulrike Fischer (interview completed 2009-11-20):
Ulrike Fischer is very active in various on-line TeX discussion groups and has written several chess-related packages.
- Peter Flynn (interview completed 2006-09-19):
Peter has worked on TeX interfaces at many levels for many
years, including SGML, XML, dual web and print presentations, within
the context of excellent typography. He is also a past board member
of TUG.
- David Fuchs (interview completed 2007-05-14):
David Fuchs is renowned in the TeX community for his work with Donald Knuth in the earliest days of TeX.
- Federico Garcia-de Castro (interview completed 2016-08-17):
Federico Garcia-De Castro is a composer of music, passionate for chess, and a lover of TeX.
- Michel Goossens (interview completed 2013-06-14):
Michel Goossens is well known for the LaTeX Companion books and was president of TUG from 1995–1997.
- Peter Gordon (interview completed 2008-01-08):
Peter Gordon is the editor at Addison Wesley for Donald Knuth's books and the company's TeX and LaTeX books.
- George Grätzer (interview completed 2005-04-13):
George Grätzer is a mathematician who has written books on TeX and LaTeX and edits a journal prepared in LaTeX.
- Eitan Gurari (profile compiled in July 2009; Eitan died before we could do an interview):
Eitan Gurari was a long term contributor to the TeX community. He was on our list to interview, but
we had not gotten to him yet at the time of his death.
This profile was compiled after his death.
- Hans Hagen (interview completed 2006-03-02):
Hans Hagen is the principal author and developer of ConTeXt, past president of
NTG, and active in many other areas of the
TeX community.
- Idris Hamid (interview completed 2009-11-01):
Idris is best known in the TeX community for his work in developing better typesetting for Arabic-script languages such as Arabic, Persian, and
Urdu.
- Hàn Thế Thành (interview completed 2008-07-24):
Hàn Thế Thành is the creator of and still maintains pdfTeX.
- Yannis Haralambous (interview completed 2009-01-06):
Yannis Haralambous is well known for his Omega system and his study of non-Latin fonts.
- Jim Hefferon (interview completed 2007-08-13):
Jim Hefferon is one of the key maintainers of CTAN and a member of the TUG board.
- Amy Hendrickson (interview completed 2008-09-14):
Amy Hendrickson has made her living for over twenty years as a TeX/LaTeX macro writer for publishing companies and academic societies;
she also does book production and teaches LaTeX.
- John Hobby (interview completed 2010-01-05):
John Hobby was the developer of MetaPost and helped develop the Metafont algorithms.
- Taco Hoekwater (interview completed 2006-10-13):
Taco Hoekwater is heavily involved in implementing many significant upgrades and improvements to various TeX-based systems.
- Klaus Höppner (interview completed 2005-02-20):
Klaus Höppner is the president of DANTE, the German TeX user group and
a member of the TUG board.
- Kris Holmes (interview completed 2018-10-01):
Kris Holmes is one-half of the Bigelow & Holmes design studio. She has worked in the areas of typeface
design, calligraphy, lettering, signage and graphic
design, screenwriting, filmmaking, and writing about
the preceding.
- Amelia Hugill-Fontanel
(interview completed 2021-01-21):
Amelia Hugill-Fontanel is the
associate curator at the Cary Graphic Arts
Collection at RIT.
- Bogusław Jackowski and Janusz Marian Nowacki (interview completed 2008-09-27):
Bogusław Jackowski and Janusz Marian Nowacki have made and continue to make many important
contributions in the world of TeX fonts.
- Mimi Jett (interview completed 2012-06-01):
Mimi Jett served on the TUG board for 15 years, including as president.
- David Kastrup (interview completed 2006-08-21):
David Kastrup is a frequent contributor to comp.text.tex and manifestly a TeXnician (see the answer to Exercise 1.1
in The TeXbook).
- Oleg Katsitadze (interview completed 2007-08-04):
Oleg Katsitadze maintains Eplain and is a contributor
to Texinfo.
- Jonathan Kew (interview completed 2007-04-03):
Jonathan Kew is best known in the TeX community as the developer of XeTeX.
- Philip Kime (interview completed 2020-07-25):
Philip Kime is the author of Biber and current developer and main lead of BibLATEX.
- Dick Koch (interview completed 2007-07-12):
Dick Koch is the creator and lead developer of TeXShop, a renowned front end for TeX on MacOSX.
- Werner Lemberg (interview completed 2006-04-28):
Werner Lemberg developed the CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) package for LaTeX and has been involved in a number
of other computer-based typesetting projects.
- Raph Levien (interview completed 2009-05-16):
Raph Levien is a programmer with a special interest in graphics applied to type. He is also a typeface designer. He holds
several patents and is a past maintainer of Ghostscript.
- Frank Liang (interview completed 2010-07-28):
Frank Liang worked with Don Knuth on the hyphenation algorithm for TeX78, and Frank's PhD thesis presented a better hyphenation
algorithm that was used in the TeX we know today and has been used by many
other typesetting systems.
- Dan Luecking (interview completed 2004-11-08):
Dan Luecking's answers on comp.text.tex are models of precision.
- David MacKay (interview completed 2009-02-10):
David MacKay (1967–2016) was a scientist at Cambridge University and an enthusiastic user of LaTeX.
- Pierre MacKay (interview done in early 2007):
Pierre MacKay (1933–2015) was
a classics professor
who was a TUG board member from 1983–1991, TUG president
from 1983–1985, and Unix site coordinator from
1983–1992. He was with TUG from the start.
- Adriana McCrea and Aleksander Simonic (interview completed 2006-06-28):
Aleksander Simonic and Adriana McCrea are the “WinEdt team” that develops and supports the WinEdt editor
popular with many MS Windows users of TeX.
- Frank Mittelbach (interview
completed 2006-01-11):
Frank Mittelbach has been the leader of the
LaTeX Project for many years. 2021 video interview
with Frank, conducted by Paulo Ney de Souza.
- Ross Moore (interview completed 2007-12-12):
Ross Moore is a long-time TUG board member and TeX contributor, especially in the areas of mathematics and Unicode
support.
- Robert Morris (interview completed 2018-04-17):
Bob Morris was involved in the birth of the TeX Users Group in 1980, and he led state-of-the-art digital typography research at
University of Massachusetts Boston.
R.I.P. Bob Morris, TUGboat 42:1.
- Janusz Marian Nowacki and Bogusław Jackowski (interview completed 2008-09-27):
Bogusław Jackowski and Janusz Marian Nowacki have made and continue to make many important
contributions in the world of TeX fonts.
- Arthur Ogawa (interview completed 2008-07-14):
Arthur Ogawa is a long time member of the TUG board and well-known package developer.
- Haruhiko Okumura (interview completed 2007-06-04):
Haruhiko Okumura promotes and supports the use of TeX in Japan.
- Scott Pakin (interview completed 2017-02-05):
Scott Pakin has developed many LaTeX packages and other TeX-related tools.
- Richard Palais (interview completed 2011-07-09):
Dick Palais was the first president (then called the chairman) of TUG.
- Oren Patashnik (interview completed 2016-06-26):
Oren Patashnik is well known as the creator of BibTeX; his graduate student days at Stanford overlapped with the
TeX Project era and people.
- Steve Peter (interview completed 2006-02-07):
Steve Peter is a publisher and linguist, does freelance book design and typesetting, and uses TeX daily. He is also a member of the TUG board.
- Michael Plass (interview completed 2009-12-20):
Michael Plass was co-implementor of the original prototype for TeX.
- Cheryl Ponchin and Susan DeMeritt (interview completed 2007-10-11):
Cheryl Ponchin and Susan DeMeritt are both members of the TUG Board of Directors (Sue is
secretary of the board), give workshops on LaTeX, and use TeX daily in
their technical typing work.
- Norbert Preining (interview
completed 2011-04-10):
Norbert is deeply involved in the TeX Live and
Debian TeX development. 2021 video interview
with Norbert, conducted by Paulo Ney de Souza.
- CV Radhakrishnan and Kaveh Bazargan (interview completed 2006-09-21):
Kaveh Bazargan and CV Radhakrishnan use TeX extensively in their typesetting
business.
- Sebastian Rahtz (interview completed
2009-03-12):
For 15 years, Sebastian Rahtz (1955–2016) was
involved in an amazing variety of TeX and TUG activities.
SPQR memoriams.
- Arthur Reutenauer (interview completed 2009-03-03):
Arthur Reutenauer is the president of Groupe francophone des utilisateurs de TeX (GUTenberg) and is active in other
aspects of TeX use and development.
- Yuri Robbers (interview completed 2008-08-24):
Yuri Robbers is a TeX user and is a production editor for The PracTeX Journal as well as maintaining the journal's web
site.
- Will Robertson (interview completed 2007-03-25):
Like many graduate students, Will Robertson has gotten involved with TeX; he is also representative of a minority of
such TeX-using graduate students who take the next step of contributing
significantly to the TeX community.
- Tomas Rokicki (interview completed 2008-08-15):
Tom Rokicki created dvips and TeX's original Pascal to C converter.
- Christian Schenk (interview completed 2006-04-15):
Christian Schenk is the author and principal developer of the popular MiKTeX distribution of TeX.
- Rainer Schöpf (interview completed 2007-08-27):
Rainer Schöpf was a co-founder of the LaTeX2e and CTAN projects, and is still a key maintainer of CTAN.
- Herb Schulz (interview completed 2011-02-01):
Herb Schulz is well known for the support he gives to users in the MacTeX world.
- Michael Sharpe (interview completed 2017-09-11):
Michael Sharpe has been using TeX since the mid-1980s. In more recent years he has been active in the TeX fonts world.
- Aleksander Simonic and Adriana McCrea (interview completed 2006-06-28):
Aleksander Simonic and Adriana McCrea are the “WinEdt team” that develops and supports the WinEdt editor
popular with many MS Windows users of TeX.
- Nicola Talbot (interview completed 2007-05-25):
Nicola Talbot is a LaTeX user, teacher, and package writer.
- Phil Taylor (interview completed 2005-05-25):
Philip Taylor is a long time TeX user/developer who chooses to work outside of the LaTeX framework. He
is also a member of the TUG board.
- Christina Thiele (interview completed 2005-03-24):
Christina Thiele has been typesetting with TeX since 1983, especially in
linguistics and other non-math/science fields. She is a past president
of TUG.
- Luis Trabb Pardo (interview completed 2010-04-08):
Donald Knuth has said that Luis Trabb Pardo was his “right hand man” for the development of TeX78.
- Howard Trickey (interview completed 2010-03-23):
Howard Trickey did one of the earliest ports of TeX to Unix.
- Boris Veytsman (interview completed 2011-01-19):
Boris Veytsman has written and maintains
many LaTeX and font-related packages and recently joined the TUG Board of Directors.
- Mari Voipio (interview completed 2012-12-08):
Mari Voipio uses ConTeXt and other TeX-world tools in her daily work and for her hobbies.
- Herbert Voß (interview completed 2010-08-31):
Herbert is best known for
his work with PSTricks and his German language books documenting LaTeX, etc.
- Zofia Walczak (interview completed 2020-02-14):
Zofia Walczak has been active in GUST since 1993. In recent
years she has been doing the translation to Polish of the TeX Live documentation.
- Dave Walden (interview completed 2006-09-20):
Dave Walden coordinates the TUG Interview Corner. This interview of him is intended to provide an answer to the question
some readers may have: “Who is this guy and why is he interviewing
TeX luminaries?”
- Joe Weening (interview completed 2010-06-08):
Joe Weening used TeX78 when he was first at Stanford, participated in the transition to TeX82, and continues to use (La)TeX
today.
- Gerben Wierda (interview completed 2006-11-28):
Gerben Wierda is well known for his tools for installing TeX and other capabilities on MacOSX systems.
- Peter Wilson (interview completed 2006-11-08):
Peter Wilson is the author of the well-known memoir class, has been involved with the development of several other
classes, and has worked extensively with fonts. In the photo he is
operating a Chandler & Price 1910 old style hand press and is in the
process of inserting a sheet of paper to print on the second side.
- Joseph Wright (interview completed 2009-10-21):
Joseph is a relatively new arrival to the world of TeX development, particularly working in
the area of improving LaTeX support for chemistry. He also is a member of the
LaTeX3 team.
Interviews from the TeX Community Blog
[#blogiv]
The TeX Community Blog is
doing its own interview series. Originally Paulo Cereda did the
interviews, but others in the community later joined Paulo during the
interview sessions. They have a dedicated chatroom for interviewing
their members; anyone can visit the chatroom and submit questions to the
interviewee, and Paulo serves in an editorial role.
- David Carlisle, April 2012 (see also our TUG interview with Carlisle)
- Paulo Cereda, January 2015
- Marc van Dongen, February 2013
- Jürnjakob Dugge, February 2012
- Ulrike Fischer, December 2012
(see also our TUG interview with
Fischer)
- Enrico Gregorio, November 2011
- Peter Grill, November 2012
- Patrick Gundlach, March 2012
- Werner Gründlingh, January 2012
- Khaled Hosny, September 2013
- Phil Kime, August 2012
- Yiannis Lazarides, February 2012
- Leo Liu, April 2013
- Aditya Mahajan, August 2012
- Gonzalo Medina, March 2012
- Mico Loretan, May 2016
- Martin Scharrer, December 2011
- Andrew Stacey, June 2012
- Nicola Talbot, June 2013
(see also our TUG interview with Talbot)
- Thomas Titz, November 2011
- Joseph Wright, September 2012
(see also our TUG interview with Wright)
Other interviews, remembrances, etc.
[#others]
Some of these people are also listed in the sections above.
About Claudio Beccari
- An
interview of Claudio Beccari was published in the journal of Greek
TeX Friends, the Greek TeX local users group.
About Barbara Beeton
- Presidential words
about Barbara Beeton, TUGboat, Vol.20 (1999), No.3,
Proceedings of the 1999 Annual Meeting.
About Javier Bezos
- Video of live interview
done as part of TUG'20, by Paulo Ney de Souza,
and transcript as
published in TUGboat.
About Charles Bigelow
- Chuck Bigelow
on fonts by Barbara Beeton,
TUGboat, Vol.43 (2022), No.3, p.225; includes links to
additional interviews and articles.
- Interview with Charles
Bigelow by Yue Wang, TUGboat, Vol.34 (2013), No.2.
About Cathy Booth
- Cathy Booth,
a remembrance by Barbara Beeton, TUGboat, Vol.13
(1992), No.1.
About Peter Breitenlohner
- Peter
Breitenlohner, 1940-2015, by Joachim Lammarsch and Marion Lammarsch, TUGboat, Vol.37 (2016),
No.1.
- Peter Breitenlohner, 1940-2015,
by Barbara Beeton, TUGboat, Vol.37 (2016),
No.1.
About Rogério Brito
- R.I.P. Rogério Brito
by Barbara Beeton, TUGboat, Vol.42 (2021), No.3.
About Mimi Burbank
- Mimi Burbank,
Jackie Damrau, TUGboat, Vol.32 (2015), No.1, p.6.
- Missing Mimi,
Christina Thiele TUGboat, Vol.32 (2015), No.1, p.7.
About Matthew Carter
- A conversation with
type designer Matthew Carter, interview by Frank Romano, TUGboat,
Vol.44 (2023), No.1.
Video part 1,
part 2,
part 3.
About Adrian Frutiger
- Adrian Frutiger,
1928-2015 by Norbert Preining, TUGboat, Vol.36
(2015), No.3.
About Charles Geschke
- R.I.P. Chuck Geschke
by Barbara Beeton, TUGboat, Vol.42 (2021), No.3.
About David R. Godine
- Note on
David R. Godine, publisher by David Walden, TUGboat, Vol.37
(2016), No.1.
About Roswitha Graham
- Roswitha von den
Schulenburg Graham, 28 March 1935-14 April 1999 by Dag Langmyhr, TUGboat, Vol.20
(1999), No.2.
About George Greenwade
- George Greenwade,
1956-2003 by Barbara Beeton, TUGboat, Vol.37 (2016),
No.1.
About John Hammersley
- Video of interview
with John Hammersley by Paulo Ney de Souza
at TUG'21,
and transcript as
published in TUGboat, TUGboat, Vol.42 (2021), No.2.
About Amelia Hugill-Fontanel
- Interview
with Amelia Hugill-Fontanel by David Walden, TUGboat, Vol.42 (2021),
No.1.
About Alan Jeffrey
- Memorial
posting by Alan's siblings, Catherine and David.
About Philip Kime
- Video of live interview
done as part of TUG'20, by Paulo Ney de Souza,
and transcript as
published in TUGboat.
The TeX Community Blog also interviewed Kime as part of its series.
About Thomas Koch
- Thomas Koch,
1964-2014 by Joachim Schrod, TUGboat, Vol.36
(2015), No.3.
About Helmut Kopka
- Helmut Kopka,
1932–2009 by Patrick W. Daly.
About Leslie Lamport
- How to Write Software With Mathematical Perfection interview with
Quanta Magazine, May 17, 2022.
- ACM ByteCast interview
by Scott Hanselman (episode 16, 2021).
- A conversation with Turing
Award winner Leslie Lamport, by Larry Larsen.
- ACM
Turing Award (2013) page, with research subjects, text and video
interviews, and more.
- How (La)TeX changed the face of
mathematics: An E-interview with Leslie Lamport, interview conducted
by Gunter M. Ziegler, TUGboat, Vol.22 (2001), No.1/2, pp.20-22.
-
A Discussion with Leslie Lamport, interview conducted by Dejan
Milojicic in IEEE Distributed Systems Online 3, 8.
About John Lees-Miller
- Video of interview
with John Lees-Miller by Paulo Ney de Souza
at TUG'22,
and transcript as
published in TUGboat, TUGboat, Vol.43 (2022), No.2.
About Pierre Mackay
- Pierre MacKay,
1933-2015, Barbara Beeton,
TUGboat, Vol.36 (2015), No.2, pp.90-91.
About Barry MacKichan
- An interview
with Barry MacKichan of MacKichan Software and Scientific WorkPlace.
About Frank Mittelbach
- Video of interview
with Frank Mittelbach by Paulo Ney de Souza
at TUG'21,
and transcript as
published in TUGboat, TUGboat, Vol.42 (2021), No.2.
About Stephen Moye
- A wayward wayfarer's
way to TeX, by Stephen Moye, TUGboat, Vol.28 (2007), No.2,
pp.153-158.
About Janusz Nowacki - Interview and GUST e-foundry font
showings, by Hans Lijklema for his book Free
Font Index.
About Norbert Preining
- Video of interview
with Norbert Preining by Paulo Ney de Souza
at TUG'21,
and transcript as
published in TUGboat, TUGboat, Vol.42 (2021), No.2.
About Sebastian Rahtz - R.I.P. Sebastian Rahtz, 1955-2016,
by Barbara Beeton, TUGboat, Vol.37 (2016),
No.1. A memoriam by
Lou Burnard and another by Frank
Mittelbach was published in TUGboat, Vol.37 (2016),
No.2. Videos from the memorial are online.
About Arthur Samuel
- Arthur
Lee Samuel, 1901-1990 by Donald Knuth, TUGboat, Vol.11
(1990), No.4.
About Walter Schmidt
- R.I.P. Walter Schmidt
by Barbara Beeton, TUGboat, Vol.42 (2021), No.3.
About Barry Smith
- In memoriam: Barry Smith
(1953-2012) by Doug Henderson, TUGboat, Vol.34 (2013), No.2.
About Donald P. Story
- Donald P. Story
(1946-2022) by Barbara Beeton, TUGboat, Vol.44 (2023), No.1.
About Richard Southall
- Richard Southall:
1937-2015, Jacques André and Alan Marshall,
TUGboat, Vol.36 (2015), No.2, pp.100-102.
About Erik Spiekermann
- Catching up with Erik Spiekermann, an interview by Google Fonts and
Sarah Daily, on the occasion of making Spiekermann's book Stop
Stealing Sheep available to all at no cost.
About Michael Spivak
- Michael D. Spivak,
1940-2020 by Barbara Beeton, TUGboat, Vol.42 (2021), No.3.
About Jack Stauffaucher
- Remembering Jack Stauffacher: Typographic Workshop 17 by Charles
Bigelow on the B&H blog.
About Kees van der Laan
- Memories of Kees:
C.G. van der Laan, 1943-2015, Erik Frambach, Jerzy Ludwichowski, and
Philip Taylor, TUGboat, Vol.36 (2015), No.2, pp.103-104.
About Hendrik D.L. Vervliet
- Hendrik Vervliet:
1923-2020 by Jacques André, TUGboat, Vol.42
(2021), No.1.
About Staszek Wawrykiewicz
- In memoriam: Staszek
Wawrykiewicz (1953-2018) by Norbert Preining, TUGboat, Vol.39
(2018), No.1.
About Boris Veytsman
- Video of interview
with Boris Veytsman by Paulo Ney de Souza
at TUG'22,
and transcript as
published in TUGboat, TUGboat, Vol.43 (2022), No.2.
About Dave Walden
- David C. Walden,
1942-2022, Karl Berry,
TUGboat, Vol.43 (2022), No.2, pp.93-95.
- David Corydon Walden's Five Careers, Alexander A. McKenzie,
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol.44, July-Sept. 2022,
pp.70-99.
- David Walden, computer scientist at dawn of Internet, dies at 79.
New York Times, May 3, 2022.
- David Walden interview:
A conversation about writing and learning and some books to read,
by Frans Goddijn. MAPS 34, Najaar 2006, pp.81-84.
- Travels in TeX Land.
A compendium of all his works relating to TeX, including his column of
the same name written for The PracTeX Journal.
About John Warnock
- John Warnock
(1940-2023) by Barbara Beeton, TUGboat, Vol.44 (2023), No.3.
About Sam Whidden
- Samuel
Blackwell Whidden, 1930-1991 by Barbara Beeton, TUGboat,
Vol.13 (1992), No.1.
About George Williams
- Oral interview with George Williams,
developer of FontForge; written
version of the same interview.
About Hermann Zapf
- Playing
Against Type, a memorial in the New York Times.
- Hermann Zapf,
world-renowned typographer and RIT professor, dies at 96, a memorial
in RIT University News; Zapf had many connections to RIT through his
life.
- Dedication
to Hermann Zapf, 1918-2015, Donald Knuth, TUGboat, Vol.36
(2015), No.2, p.92.
- Farewell
Hermann Zapf, Hàn Thế Thành, TUGboat, Vol.36
(2015), No.2, p.93.
- Remembering
Hermann Zapf, Kris Holmes, TUGboat, Vol.36
(2015), No.2, pp.93-94.
- Digital
typography with Hermann Zapf, Peter Karow, TUGboat, Vol.36
(2015), No.2, p.95-99.
- Panel discussion with Hermann Zapf
and Donald Knuth, reported by Taco Hoekwater, EuroTeX 2005 proceedings.
- Laudatio for Professor
Hermann Zapf, Frank Mittelbach, TUGboat, Vol.22 (2001), No.1/2, pp.24-26.
- My collaboration with Don Knuth
and my design work, Hermann Zapf, TUGboat, Vol.22 (2001), No.1/2, pp.
26-30.
- The
Lifestory of Hermann Zapf, by Hermann Zapf, at the Linotype website.
- Just what is TeX? TUG's brief
introductory page.
- The definitive history of Donald Knuth's creation and development of
TeX is his book Digital
Typography.
- TeX: A branch of desktop publishing evolution,
Parts 1 and 2,
by Barbara Beeton, Karl Berry, and David Walden.
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.
Part 1: vol.40, no.3, pp.78–93, July–Sept. 2018.
Part 2: vol.41, no.2, pp.29–41, April–June 2019.
Preprints and additional material.
- Video of panel
discussion involving Knuth and all but one of the key Stanford graduate
students who helped him develop TeX, held at the TUG 2010
convention in San Francisco.
- The (La)TeX project: A case
study of open source software, Alexandre Gaudeul, TUGboat,
Vol.24 (2003), No.1, pp. 132-145
- Historical snippets on TeX and
friends (scroll four-fifths of the way down the PDF page) by Dominik
Wujastyk, from Baskerville, Vol.9, No.2, August 1999.
- A Brief History of TeX, Philip
Taylor, TUGboat, Vol.17 (1996), No.4, pp.367-381.
Background to the interviews
[#ivbackground]
This Interview Corner was coordinated for many years by Dave Walden,
who spent a lifetime in computer R&D but who was a relative newcomer to
TeX and friends when he started doing these interviews in 2004. Dave was
a serious user of (La)TeX (see his TeX Land web
pages), but not a particularly expert user. He did these interviews in
hopes that other users of TeX will be interested in knowing more
about the evolution and use of TeX and friends, and the people behind them.
Interview subjects were chosen based on (a) seeking diversity
in many dimensions, (b) recommendations from people about who
should be interviewed, and (c) potential interview subjects being
willing to be interviewed.
Dave stepped down from the Interview Corner in 2021, and passed away in 2022. He always encouraged others to
participate in this and his other projects, and a new volunteer to
continue with the interviews would be welcome; please email interviews@tug.org.
$Date: 2024/08/07 21:35:58 $
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