Jeremy Blum

I first encountered Donald Knuth’s series The Art of Computer Programming, while working as a programmer after graduating with my undergraduate degree. The series, which is taking Knuth decades to write, can certainly take equally long periods of time to adequately digest. The portions that I read from the series not only improved my programming ability, but more importantly opened up for me a world of fundamental ideas in computer science. The exposure to these ideas marked the beginning of my serious study of computer science, first as a doctoral student, then as a research scientist, and now as a faculty member at Penn State.